


Patchwork God

by whiselle



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Depression, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, unnecessary number of references to church
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-01
Updated: 2020-07-01
Packaged: 2021-01-31 16:37:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 58,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21449347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiselle/pseuds/whiselle
Summary: It is the bits and cutouts of time in the middle that will mold together like puzzle pieces to solve the problem. In which Josh is precisely one-third of what Tyler cares about, events proceed along their usual timeline with some key changes, and Tyler takes an accidental three-year course in self-reflection.
Relationships: Josh Dun/Tyler Joseph
Comments: 36
Kudos: 74





	Patchwork God

**Author's Note:**

> For [R](https://getsloud.tumblr.com), who not only edited every iteration of every scene but also listened to me talk about this incessantly for four years.

* * *

When Tyler first gets signed, one of the companies—an agent—tells him he sings like a goat. High pitched, nasally. Tyler doesn’t particularly agree or disagree. Mostly, he remembers thinking that the agent should get his hair cut.

It looked terrible.

He hears his voice when the head of the indie label that's considering signing him (them, at this point) plays it back to him in the conference room.

The agent says, like Tyler’s not in the room: “He sounds like a goat.”

Tyler’s hands twist under a glass table. He felt overdressed when he saw the interns walking in, and then underdressed when he walked into the meeting. Now, the label head ignores the agent and pushes a thick document across the table.

“You’re under a contract, now,” he says, like Tyler doesn’t know this already. “You’ve got to create a specific theme or something, that’s all in here, but the topic’s gotta be approved.” The head isn’t looking at Josh. Tyler wishes he would.

Tyler smiles, wraps his left hand around the fingers of his right one, thinks: _n__o,_ then he nods. He reaches across the glass and takes it, signing with the pen the agent hands him.

* * *

Before this, the original band consisted of Tyler and a few friends. Tyler tries not to think of it this way, but none of them were particularly talented.

He kicks them out in the end, or they have “creative differences.” Whatever he ends up calling it, he doesn’t think about it.

When they really begin, it’s a Thursday morning, and it's at a bookstore. Contrary to what they’re going to tell their fans later, they don’t meet in a prison. They don't meet on a crashed train. They don’t meet at a gun show. Tyler couldn’t shoot a gun if someone held one up to the back of his skull.

They meet at a Books-a-Million on a Thursday morning, and it’s raining, and the only reason Tyler goes over to talk to Josh in the first place is that he thinks he might have seen him somewhere. Friend of a friend of a friend at a party once type thing.

Josh looks a bit like one of Nick’s friends. Tyler’s friend circle extends this far: his family, the friends he meets at church, the venue managers who took pity and were able to make his old band money even though they kind of sucked.

Tyler says, “I’m Tyler. Do I know you from somewhere?” And Josh says, “Maybe,” but like it’s a fact.

It turns out Josh really is Nick’s friend and can also play the drums. He seems like the type. He’s got dark hair, kind of scooped up at the top of his head, styled and stiff with product. His t-shirt is so faded Tyler can barely read the logo on it.

He looks like every kid in high school Tyler was afraid to approach, but softer.

It’s the light of the bookstore, maybe.

Josh gives Tyler a rhythm, literally and metaphorically. He seems to even out Tyler’s personality, bring it down to a manageable level.

The two of them practice when Josh’s roommate isn’t home, which is all the time. He lives about 15 minutes away from Tyler’s apartment, but less if there’s no traffic and even less when Tyler drives there past 11 pm because he has smudged lyrics crumpled in his palms that need a beat to breathe.

Josh lives in a house, a real one, which is small, and always either slightly too warm or slightly too cold. There’s a garden in the back, browned and crunchy on the edges from forgetfulness. Josh tells Tyler the woman who lived there before him used to grow sunflowers there.

It starts out at only Tyler’s lyrics, and they pick through the mess as they go. Josh can’t really sing, but he can write. Or maybe he helps Tyler write. It doesn’t matter.

They watch movies while they sit on the run-down futon Josh says he picked up from the side of the road a year ago. Tyler doesn’t watch a lot of movies, really, but Josh seems to.

“Have you ever seen Fight Club?” Josh asks. Tyler hasn’t. Josh is funny in a way Tyler has to get used to. It’s hard to tell when he’s making a joke, or when the joke is Tyler.

Josh grins, crooked-like. “It’s my favorite movie.” He’s lying back on the couch and his legs are half-thrown over Tyler’s lap. Tyler’s staring at the screen and running a finger down a crack in the red leather cushion.

He can’t really tell if Josh likes Fight Club ironically or not.

“Oh,” says Tyler.

“You’ll like it,” he says. “One of the characters is named after you.”

Tyler feels himself smile.

They didn’t really do anything at all today. Josh stayed off the drums and listened to Tyler sing lyrics they kept placing and replacing. Tyler really does only rap in songs because he can’t fit in all the lyrics he needs to. Josh knows this, he says so. He says, earlier that day, that Tyler should speak faster so they can fit it all in. “We can’t forget any of your spiritual vomit, Tyler.”

Tyler feels a bit like he’s burning from the inside out when he answers, sarcastically, “Thanks, Josh.”

They’re watching, when Tyler, who’s been wondering for a while, asks, “Do you believe in God?”

Tyler Durden is pressing lye to the Narrator’s hand with a kiss.

Josh pauses, then says, “Yes. I go to church sometimes, you know.” His voice raises with the last few words; he’s making it into a joke. Of course, Tyler, of course I believe in God and Him and go to church.

Ah. Tyler realizes, out of nowhere, that Josh knows Nick from church. Josh shifts his legs from Tyler’s lap to curl them up against his chest. His socks have robots on them, and Tyler shifts his eyes back to the screen. “Yeah. That’s, that’s good.”

“I thought,” begins Josh, but he doesn’t finish the sentence.

+

It’s a long movie, and once it ends, it’s late. The screen flickers to the bouncing DVD logo, and Tyler’s eyes kind of burn. Josh hasn’t said anything in a while, but Tyler’s pretty sure it’s because he’s asleep. Favorite movie, okay.

He would say something about it out loud, if Josh’s mouth weren’t open and drooling on the side of the pillow.

Josh had, at some point, during one of the scenes near the end with an excessive number of explosives, moved his legs back over to what was _obviously_ Tyler’s side of the couch. His feet are pushed under Tyler’s left thigh.

Tyler moves and stands up, leans sideways, shakes his shoulder. Josh grunts unattractively and sits up, wiping his mouth and blinking. “Did you like it?”

“Yes,” says Tyler, “but I should probably leave now.”

“It’s really late, Tyler. Crash on the couch, or something. It’s probably a bad idea to drive this late, your eyes are half-closed.” His voice is raspy with sleep.

Tyler thinks it’s too dark for Josh to see his eyes. “Yeah, okay.”

Josh’s couch gets scratchy and uncomfortable if you’re on it for too long, and the blanket isn’t enough when the living room gets really cold in the morning, but he half-wakes to Josh making pancakes in the kitchen, so he forgets about being chilly.

Josh calls from the kitchen, “I’ve made you breakfast!”

Tyler snorts into the pillow his face is pressed against, because he can hear Josh’s self-satisfaction from the living room.

He doesn’t bother going home. Instead, he stays until evening, and they practice for the record deal they don’t quite have yet.

They perform even though they’re unsigned.

They are a two-person band, and they’re not large enough or rich enough to demand a bus. They’re also definitely not popular enough to demand a bus, this first tour—Tyler thinks of it that way, like there’s going to be a second in the near future—they’re just a supporting band. They come on before the other supporting band, the one that comes on before the actual artist people came here to see.

Which is not them. Which it will be. Tyler prays in hotel beds, now.

Tyler and Josh work together smooth as butter: this is what their manager tells them. Their manager is a short bald man named Michael, and he’s very nice until the conversation comes to money, and then he becomes the cheapest person Tyler’s ever met.

They technically shouldn’t even have a manager, but someone once told Tyler that even a garbage manager can make booking venues seem easy and get an unsigned band signed more quickly, so Michael’s here.

They do end up with a bus—or more accurately, a motorhome—with a few bunk beds and some sort of micro-kitchen with a working coffee maker and a non-working microwave. Based on the state of nearly every utility, Tyler hopes they will not be spending many nights on it.

Josh’s very elderly neighbor had given the bus to him for $300 before they left. According to Josh, the man had told him that Josh was getting “A great deal for it,” and that “Success would come easily.”

“Although,” Josh had added, “he can’t legally drive anymore, so I think he should have given it to us for free. What was he going to use it for, anyways?

The second they enter, Josh calls out “Top!” loudly and in Tyler’s ear. Josh shoves his way up the stairs with his duffel bags, stretching to climb up to the top bunk, while Tyler watches him get his shirt stuck as it catches on the edge of the rail.

“Yeah, yeah,” says Tyler, and he walks over to the bottom. Michael tells them not to break anything.

Tyler falls off his bunk the first night and cracks the railing on the side. He didn’t even think most bottom bunks had a railing.

Josh, when he tells him, advises Tyler to cover it up with a blanket. Mostly, Tyler just hopes Michael won’t make them pay for it if (when) he finds out.

The band they’re touring with is popular, above them in ways that remain carefully unsaid. Josh and Tyler don’t hang out with them that much, even though the whole reason they’re there is that Josh says he knows the drummer. He never really elaborates.

It’s not like the crowd isn’t receptive to them. Because no one knows who they are, the crowd starts off unenthusiastically, but gradually becomes louder. Whether it’s because they realize their music isn’t entirely garbage or because their performance is almost over, Tyler will never know.

Their performances aren’t over the top. Tyler sings as he usually does, and Josh plays perfectly next to him. Josh, before they set the whole thing up, tells Tyler he should wear cooler clothes on stage than he does in real life.

Sometimes, they try to match in all black or all white, but sometimes they still end up going on stage dressed casually. The stage lights are hot and make Tyler sweat more than he thought was possible.

When they come off of a performance, high on adrenaline, Josh is clingy and excited. He throws damp arms around Tyler in the darkened hallways leading back to the dressing rooms. Sweat will drip off his nose, and Tyler will pretend to cringe.

Excluding the moments where the audience decides to take pity and applaud, and excluding the moments where Josh spends several minutes telling Tyler how great they are after particularly adrenaline-inducing performance, being on the road is terrible.

Tyler cannot sleep in a new place every night.

They stay in 3-star hotels when they’re lucky, but mostly they stay in small motels next to the highway. Some of them rent by the hour.

The sheets are always dry and stiff on Tyler’s skin.

Josh never complains.

Sometimes they go out to 24-hour diners together after a performance. It’s better food than they’ll get from the hotel service and better than the instant oatmeal Michael “sprung for” on the bus kitchen.

That makes Tyler feels like he’s on a road trip across America as opposed to on tour for an off-genre band with just enough fans to fill a high school auditorium.

Josh always orders a genuine meal, even if it’s two in the morning. It’s also usually a breakfast food, except for when the tired waitress tells Josh that sorry sir, we don’t serve breakfast food past when breakfast is supposed to happen. Tyler drinks burning instant coffee and usually gets a side or dessert. Diner pie is not as bad as he thought it would be.

Tonight, across the booth from him, Josh eats a waffle with strawberries and whipped cream and stares out of the diner window from their booth.

Motel lights, theirs or not, glow outside. When they’re going through Middle America, there’s always a field outside, pitch dark. The stars are bright. Tyler feels suspended in time.

Josh taps his fingers on the table, quick steady drummer beat, and says, “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”

At this exact moment, Tyler can’t decide if he wants to die or not. He wonders if he should tell Josh this. Josh might worry.

It’s late, so he does anyway.

Josh doesn’t say anything for a minute. He looks like he’s going to joke about it for a second, and then he thinks better of it. He picks up his hand from the table and half-reaches for Tyler’s wrist, friendly.

“I think it’ll get better.” He pauses. “We don’t suck, or anything. People will like us. Remember that girl who asked for your autograph yesterday? With the green hat and the braids? It’ll be like that, but more. Thousands of people will come for us. You. Give it a year. Give it an album. No one is famous from the start.”

Tyler doesn’t think the questionable success of their band is the problem.

Pulling his wrist away from Josh, Tyler picks up his fork and stabs a french fry. “Interestingly, Josh, the last time I checked, you weren't a prophet.”

Josh’s teeth make a clicking sound when he’s annoyed, and they make it three times before Josh opens his mouth again.

“Maybe not, Tyler, but I know this.” In the fluorescent lighting of a diner in the middle of Wisconsin, Tyler wonders for a second if he might.

For the first few weeks of touring, he can’t even write. They get in the room, always after a performance, and Josh lets him have the first shower. After, he sits on his bed while Josh is having his turn, and stares at a blank notepad.

He can physically feel his under-eye circles forming.

He’s ready to retire from the music industry.

Josh says they’re going to be famous, but Tyler is starting to wonder if he should consider a Plan B because right now he doesn’t have one.

Josh notices by week two-and-a-half.

He comes out of the shower and he never dries off, so when he sits down to lean over Tyler’s shoulder with a towel wrapped around his waist he drips all over Tyler’s t-shirt and bedspread. He says, “Whoops,” and then, “So. What are you working on?”

Tyler scowls. “I’m writing.”

Josh carefully looks at the blank book in Tyler’s lap, and then back at Tyler. “I really like what you have so far.”

Tyler clenches his jaw, and Josh looks like he feels a little guilty. He drops his head on to Tyler’s shoulder. “Sorry. I. Do you need help?” Josh hasn’t really helped Tyler write before. He helped reorganize lyrics on songs that he considered “A bit too much, Tyler,” but he was never the one putting the pen to paper.

Now, he reaches around Tyler and takes the pen from him.

He says, “What are you thinking about?”

Tyler says, “God.” He watches Josh grip the pen in a way that tells Tyler he wasn’t yelled at enough for proper grip in grade school.

“And?”

“Why—why we’re here. As in on tour, I mean. And I guess, other things.”

“What do you want to say?”

Tyler tells him.

Josh is a social genius. He is charismatic in ways that Tyler will never be: the way he interacts with the fans, his smooth way of talking them both in and out of any situation. Mostly interviews they didn’t prepare for. The way he can get Tyler to do anything with him, it seems.

Tyler’s not violently antisocial or anything; he’s just tired all the time. Josh tries to cheer him up. He knows.

The one time they do go out with the fronting band they’re touring with, they end up at some nightclub. It’s in New York, or something, a big city. They all start to blend together. All Tyler knows is that the club is packed and smells of smoke.

The singer is nice. He’s small and shy and he smiles a lot. The guitarist, he’s less nice. To be fair, Tyler doesn’t know him very well, but he bounces off the walls. He’s got a personality that overpowers Tyler’s own six times over, and it shows when they finally talk at the bar.

The guitarist gestures wildly with every other sentence, and moves from topic to topic so quickly Tyler can’t keep up. The guitarist seems at some points like he can’t keep up with himself either and pauses every now and then to say “Ty… Ty, what was I talking about?”

Tyler hates when people call him that. He can’t see Josh in the dimly lit club.

He rests his cheek on his hand on the bar and stays silent. Guitarist seems to be talking about women. How he’s fucked a lot of them and that he’s really good at it, made them scream or something. Maybe another time, Tyler would be interested, but now he’s mostly trying not to fall asleep.

Guitarist does keep buying them drinks, though, so Tyler continues to sit.

Tyler hopes Guitarist doesn’t notice that his eyelids are drooping. They go through this for maybe five or forty five minutes, but the lead singer eventually drags Guitarist off the bar stool where he’s talking to Tyler.

The way he grabs Guitarist’s arm is sharp and rehearsed, like he’s had to do this a lot. The lead singer looks like he’s frowning. “You’ve had enough, I think.” Lead Singer’s hissing it into his ear, but Tyler can hear what they’re saying from a few feet away.

Suddenly, Guitarist reaches over and grabs Lead Singer by the belt loops, pulling him in. They look like they’re going to kiss. Their mouths are so close together, breathing into each other.

Tyler doesn’t know what to do, and the back of his brain is telling him that he’s staring. The two of them, they don’t get any closer.

Club lights are flickering against the back of Tyler’s skull; he feels his fingers twisting at the hem of his t-shirt.

He wonders if he should tell Josh about this. Tyler wishes he had less to drink than he had, even though he doesn’t drink that much because he knows it’s bad and it’s _bad_ and he’s Right, because looking for Josh is harder than he thought it would be.

The flashing lights are giving him a migraine.

He can tell he’s probably slurring his words a little by the way Josh lets out a little laugh when he finally finds him. “Tyler, are you drunk? Do you even drink?”

He used to not drink, but now he sometimes does. Only a few times. He sort of wants to explain this to Josh, but he doesn’t quite seem able to form the explanation into actual words.

“I’ll take you home.” Josh says it like it’s a command, so Tyler follows him when he makes his way through the crowd and out of the bar.

It’s freezing outside. New York (maybe it’s Chicago?) is far too cold. Ohio isn’t warm or anything, but Tyler also didn’t spend excessive amounts of time outdoors during the winter.

He liked watching the snow from the inside.

He gets the feeling that Josh was the kind of kid who got excited for snow because it was something to play in.

Wondering, vaguely, what it would have been like to be friends with Josh when they were children, Tyler thinks about whether or not they would have been friends at all. Josh was probably cooler than he was. Even now, he is.

Josh, who’s walking next to him with his arm linked around Tyler’s, says, “I probably wasn’t.”

Tyler didn’t realize he had opened his mouth.

Really, they’re not very popular.

The tour progresses and people like them by default, and maybe they have a few cult followers. Tyler starts to recognize some of the people who come up to him after the shows. There’s the girl with the braids, and there are some others, and there are some boys.

A lot of them have their hair dyed, which. Maybe foreshadows whatever fanbase they’re going to have, or something. All twenty of them.

Michael has set them up a few interviews, and they’ve been okay.

Tyler and Josh, together, they’re really funny. The interviewers tell them this sometimes afterwards, when they turn the cameras off three-two-one and they say “Twentyonepilots.” (Like it’s one word.) “Twentyonepilots, you guys are really funny.”

Tyler knows this, and Josh smiles and bumps his shoulder into Tyler’s on whatever couch they’re sitting on.

They’ve had two years to learn to play off each other, so. Yeah, they’re funny. They can keep straight faces nine out of ten times the other makes a joke; they don’t even need a script.

Usually, though, interview jokes are not as unscripted as they seem. They are handed lines for over half the interviews they do.

They also ignore over half of the lines they are given.

The interviewers, they’re not so happy about this for the first ten or so minutes. In the end, though, Tyler and Josh and Josh and Tyler playing off each other are funnier than anything the interviewers are going to give them.

Josh glows in this. Tyler can see it when he makes a joke that’s not on the script and he turns his neck and grins at Tyler, all teeth.

This, here, is where Tyler accidentally laughs when he’s trying to keep a straight face.

They have this lady who doesn’t ask them any questions about music, or how they developed it.

Instead, she is the first interviewer to prod them about their personal lives. How they met. She knows that Tyler had other members of his band before Josh joined, but she seems to not care about this.

Tyler, he opens his mouth to say “We met in a bookstore,” and gets only the first word out before Josh cuts in.

He was ready to say: We’re boring and we met in a bookstore. Or something. I thought I knew him from around.

Josh’s voice cuts sharply over Tyler’s. “There was a fire.”

Both Tyler and the interviewer are staring at Josh.

“A building was burning. I worked as a volunteer firefighter at the time, and Tyler lived in an apartment building. We thought we had evacuated everyone, but I saw him in the window when I was walking around the building.”

Oh, this is how they’re doing it. The interviewer doesn’t look like she realizes that Josh is jerking her around by her chain yet.

“He was up in his window and yelling for help. I scaled the building and saved him. If I had been a minute later, he would have died, and you wouldn’t have been interviewing us at this exact moment.”

Josh ruins it at the last second by smiling, and the interviewer gives a forced laugh.

Tyler nods from his side of the couch, solemnly. “I still have scars.”

“He does.”

“Josh was a great firefighter.”

“I was a better firefighter than I am a drummer.”

“Maybe you should switch professions.”

“This late in my drumming career? I can’t. I’m the staple that keeps this band together. No one would come see us if I wasn’t drumming.”

It’s interesting, how Josh says the last one. Like he’s sarcastic.

“Hm,” says Tyler. “You’re probably right. Good thing you can climb straight brick walls.”

Both of them finally look up at the interviewer.

Half of her mouth is quirked up. “And, from that. Fire incident. How long have you known each other?”

Tyler says, “About two years.” They're not really lying.

“God,” she says, “I would have guessed longer.”

Neither of them really knows how to respond to this. “Well, we spend a lot of time together. Like, a disgusting amount. It’s a miracle I haven’t murdered him yet,” says Josh.

This interview is in South Carolina, and the hotel they go back to is hot and muggy all over.

Tyler’s bed is always the one next to the window, and when he sits on it, the sheets are starchy and crinkle under his legs. “Tomorrow’s Sunday.”

Josh doesn’t look up from where he’s shoving some of his clothing back into his duffel bag. He sighs a little, and then he says, “Would you like to go to church, Tyler?”

Tyler hasn’t been in months. He misses home, and he misses getting dressed up in the morning and going out to late breakfast afterwards. “Yes,” he says.

“Yeah.” Josh agrees even though Tyler hasn’t really said anything.

“Josh, can I have the first shower?”

Josh drops on the bed next to him.

He’s wearing pajama pants and has his shirt still hanging on one of his shoulders, half taken-off. He yawns and leans back so his head is on the sheets.

“Sure, whatever, Tyler.”

Tyler’s shower burns his skin, and he changes in the bathroom.

He comes back out, steam flooding the room behind him, and Josh is asleep on his bed. He is absolutely not surprised.

Josh is still wearing half of his shirt, and he’s starfish-sprawled over the twin-sized mattress with his head directly in the middle of the pillow.

Tyler sighs, and pushes the sheets of Josh’s bed back. He sets the alarm for seven before flicking off the light.

Josh wakes up before Tyler does, and Tyler knows because he can feel the residual humidity from Josh’s shower on his skin when he wakes up in the morning.

At 7, Josh is wearing a collared shirt and shoes that aren’t converse that Tyler has seen him wear maybe three times in his life.

“Tyler Joseph,” he says, immediately after Tyler opens his eyes. “Where is your fucking tie.”

Tyler has no idea.

“Ah!” Josh says from the corner where he’s digging through Tyler’s stuff. “It’s kind of wrinkled.”

Tyler rolls over and smashes his face into the pillow. “You’re kind of wrinkled.”

Josh clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Tyler, you’ve got to stand up and put a shirt on. You’re unpresentable.”

Josh is leaning over Tyler, hands just above Tyler’s hips. Tyler vaguely registers that Josh’s fingers are hard and digging into his bones, warm, before Josh is dragging him out of bed.

He’s pushing Tyler up against the wall and throwing clothing at him, and Tyler is trying to drag his shirt over his head.

“It starts at eight!”

“Josh, I don’t think we’re going to be late, we have an hour.”

“Not if we have to eat before.”

Tyler isn’t hungry.

Josh is buttoning Tyler’s shirt with his right hand while he unsuccessfully tries to untangle Tyler’s tie with his left.

He throws it around Tyler’s neck, and Tyler says, “I think I can tie my own tie.”

Josh grins close enough that Tyler can see the yellow in his teeth. Tyler thinks, abruptly, that Josh should stop drinking coffee.

His hands are quick at Tyler’s neck, and Tyler probably couldn’t even tie his own tie this quickly anyway, so he leans back against the wall and lets him.

Breath hot on Tyler’s neck, Josh says, “This is a really ugly tie.”

Tyler doesn’t really have a lot to say to that, because Josh is right, and the tie is this muddy green color that clashes with undertones Tyler didn’t even know he had.

He’s not looking now though, he’s looking up at the cracked ceiling with his neck stretched so Josh can fumble around in the general vicinity of his throat.

Josh reaches up and straightens Tyler’s collar, runs a hand through his own hair, and takes a single step back.

“This is good. You’re good now.”

“Yes,” says Tyler.

Josh shuts the door behind them when they walk out.

Tours are fast-moving and fluid things, and Tyler likes to think of his life in fractions.

When he was younger and going through school, every year passed faster than the one before. Senior year was the fastest.

This is why, though: Tyler thinks each year is a smaller fraction of his whole life. When he was five, ten-minute car rides felt like a month. Now, one year—that’s 4.1 percent of his entire life.

He’s 24, so this year was only 4.1 percent. The tour though, it’s been 100 percent of his touring experience. Maybe the summer was the 4.1, but the tour itself is one thing. One hundred percent is one thing.

It should feel longer in Tyler’s mind, but it doesn’t.

There are no breaks. When they get back home, he doesn’t think of it as “start of tour,” and “middle-ish” of tour and “days near the end.”

It’s one huge thing, and it’s like Tyler never slept.

His apartment is unwelcoming. It’s chilly and damp and some of the lights don't work. They should, because they’re barely been used.

One of his plants is wilting, and the other is browned and dry. Tyler just wants to lie down.

He wakes up about sixteen hours later on the couch, still in the clothes he flew home in.

He has four texts from Josh, three of which are about a movie Tyler has never seen and one which just says “come,” one from his mother, and one from his landlady, who wants him to pay the bills for the next month.

He writes a check, gets into his car, and goes to Josh’s.

When Josh opens the door, he says, “Tyler, what the fuck. You haven’t changed. You’re disgusting. Did you even sleep? Tyler, Tyler did you—”

Tyler pushes past him and sits on one of the stools in the kitchen. “I slept for maybe fifteen or sixteen hours. Can I shower here?”

Josh looks a little stricken. Tyler’s pretty sure that because he looks like shit. He didn’t bother to look in the mirror, but he definitely hasn’t brushed his hair, and he can _feel _his eyelashes sticking together whenever he blinks.

He doesn’t wait for Josh to respond, walking past him and into the bathroom, turning up the water until his skin is pink.

When he gets out, Josh is playing a game that involves a lot of shooting.

“Can I borrow your pajamas?”

“Yes. You’re dripping all over my floor, get out.”

Tyler thinks this is a little hypocritical. Josh has ruined several hotel room bath mats because they can’t recover from the amount of water he gets on them.

Josh’s room is kind of empty because he probably hasn’t unpacked yet. His bed is made, and his room smells like laundry detergent. Tyler wonders if he slept on the couch, too.

Josh has a chest of drawers pressed up opposite his bed, and Tyler goes for the bottom one. Tyler doesn’t usually borrow Josh’s clothing, but he thinks he remembers where sweats and things tend to be.

He grabs soft red plaid pants and an old high school t-shirt. When he comes out, Josh says, “I forgot I had that shirt.”

The game is off, but Josh hasn’t moved from his position on the couch.

Crossing the room, Tyler sits against the couch opposite to Josh, pulling his legs up against his chest. Josh says, “What are we going to do tomorrow?”

Tyler is looking at a stain on the couch when he says, “I’ll probably go home. Leave of my own free will, instead of having you kick me out. Tomorrow’s Sunday, anyways.”

When Josh smiles, his teeth sort of gleam in the dim light. “Ah! True. Can’t have me kicking you out. How terribly embarrassing that would be for you. Absolutely horrible.”

“You know,” says Tyler, “I have an apartment.”

“_Do _you?”

“Oh, yes. It’s very nice.”

Actually, Tyler’s apartment is kind of horrible. He wishes he had rented a house. Josh knows this, because he has been there, and he has heard Tyler complain about it.

Now, though, Josh stretches his legs across the couch and puts the controller down on the floor in a loud manner that says it will be broken in about a year. Frowning, Tyler shoves at Josh’s feet, which are now invading his side of the couch, and says, “Go sleep in your own bed.”

Josh can nap absolutely anywhere. When he answers Tyler, groggily, Tyler knows he’s already half-asleep, and gives up. They can sleep on the couch.

When Tyler wakes up, Josh’s feet are still pressed against his side, but Tyler’s slunk down the arm and they're lying opposite each other.

Josh is drooling on the couch, and Tyler’s going to make fun of him for it when he wakes up.

His back kind of hurts. Reaching clumsily behind him for his phone, Tyler wonders if he still has enough time to make it to church. 10:38 am. So. Probably not. He’ll go to a service a few days from now, he can find time.

He’s going to steal some of Josh’s food, and then he’s going to take his time eating it to see if Josh will wake up in the next hour, and _then_ he’s going to use Josh’s shower again, and then he’ll go back to his own apartment.

When Tyler opens the fridge, his plan kind of falls apart when he realizes that Josh has absolutely no food, excluding condiments. His freezer has two things: frozen peas and frozen blueberries.

At least his shower is warm.

When he comes out, Josh has moved positions to take up even more room on the couch, but he has not woken up. Tyler leaves a note.

_Josh,_

_Gone back to luxury apartment._

_Have you ever tried waking up before 12 pm?_

_Also, you drool. Both literally and figuratively._

_-Tyler_

Tyler puts the note on top of Josh’s drool spot. This way, either Josh will drool on the note itself, or the note will cover up the drool and Josh will get the joke when he picks it up. Either way, when Josh wakes, he will have to face his own failings as a human being.

Didn’t an interviewer once call Tyler a lyrical genius? Yeah. Not only is he a lyrical genius, he’s a genius at everything else. Take that, sleeping Josh.

Grabbing his keys from the kitchen counter, Tyler leaves, rubbing his eyes as he puts the key into the ignition.

His apartment is possibly even worse to come home to than it was yesterday. There is still no one else there, and he has spent months on tour with Josh.

Lots of people say they would like some alone time when they come back from tour, but those people are also in bands with a lot of other terrible, loud people. Josh is not terrible and he is not loud. (Both of these are sometimes debatable.)

Coming home to a Josh-less apartment, despite seeing Josh 20 minutes ago, sort of sucks.

Tyler cleans up a little and unpacks (or throws all his stuff on the floor) so he can start to put it away.

While he is lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and very carefully thinking about how he wants to fold the twenty-four t-shirts he brought on tour with him, and how he should probably wash them before he puts them away, Tyler actually manages to fall asleep again.

He is asleep for about three hours. Josh, he thinks, would probably be proud of him.

When he wakes up, Tyler calls Josh about five minutes after he pulls himself out of bed and goes searching for food. He does it on the pretense that they both need groceries.

Josh, who is very dependable about these kinds of things, is over within twenty minutes.

Josh is one of those people who, instead of being inspired enough to go up and actually knock on someone’s door, honks in the driveway. He does it precisely because he knows it annoys Tyler and the rest of Tyler’s apartment building (the majority of whom Tyler hates anyways, but _still_).

When Tyler runs—literally runs, because Josh will only stop honking when he can see Tyler outside—down the stairs to the first level, Tyler can see Josh laughing with his head back against the seat at his own joke.

“You’d think, perhaps, not being a fifteen year old, you’d know better by now,” says Tyler, now that he’s sitting in the passenger seat.

Turning on the car, Josh grins. “I think not.”

The closest grocery store to Tyler’s house is a large chain one. Fluorescent lighting burns Tyler’s retinas as Josh goes to grab them a cart.

“I think we should start eating more vegetables,” announces Josh, as he heads towards the cereal aisle.

“I eat vegetables. You eat trash,” says Tyler.

“Trash?” Josh looks outraged. “I eat practically the same foods you do. If you would kindly remember, for the good of our audience,” says Josh, loudly gesturing to the three other people in the aisle, “a very specific time not so long ago where you consumed—what was it? Only french fries for four days on a dare, and then nearly passed out on stage?”

“Okay,” says Tyler, grudgingly, because all right. “One time! It was one time.”

“Hmm. They all say that.” Josh is reaching towards the Fruit Loops.

They end up leaving with four different kinds of cereal, a bunch of foods that can be microwaved, some lettuce, and fruits.

Josh had actually tried to pick the weirdest fruits he could find, and it had almost gotten them kicked out of the store. He had walked down the entire produce section, turned back around, picked out the fruits with the most unique names, and asked Tyler (loudly) if he would rank each fruit on a scale of 1 to 10.

“Tyler,” he had said. “Rank this fruit. Do it for me, do it for our family. I can hear our children crying in our home from here.” The manager had come over by the fourth fruit, and stood there while Tyler had pushed his hand against Josh’s mouth and told the manager that, sir, we’re very sorry, he has trouble sometimes in public places, sir.

By the time they get back, they really do have a lot of weird fruits that they don’t know what to do with. “Smoothie, maybe?” Tyler asks Josh when they get back into the car.

“I don’t know. I think we should try them all separately. Do they taste as good as they sound? We’ve gotta test it, Tyler. It’s our job. Our calling.”

“We could have our own reality TV show, or something.”

“Tyler! You’re smiling! Is it a Good Day?” Tyler can hear the capital letters when Josh says it.

Tyler knows by now that Josh isn’t making fun of him. Ninety-five percent of what comes out of Josh’s mouth sounds like a joke, but even out of the joke-sounding portion, it’s not all supposed to be… a joke.

He’ll ask something serious and make it light-hearted because he just does that, and he knows it makes Tyler more comfortable.

It _is_ a Good Day. When Tyler answers that yeah, it is, he’s still smiling. It wasn’t before, but then he took a nap and then Josh made him rate fruits and hopefully Josh will just stay for a while.

Josh actually does make him finish rating the fruits, but not until later. They’re lying stretched out on a blanket in front of the television, but they’re not paying attention to what’s on. Something with a lot of explosions.

“Okay, this one. Cloudberry.” Josh is holding out a peach-colored fruit that looks like a blackberry.

“Um,” says Tyler, when the fruit is in his mouth. “The name is cool, but it’s really sour.”

“Fuck!” says Josh, unnecessarily loud, then asks, “Another fruit with a cooler name than taste?”

“Well. It’s not as disappointing as dragon fruit.”

Josh nods with a seriousness that doesn’t suit Tyler’s dim apartment.

Then he says, “Can I have the rest?” as he reaches over and takes it out of Tyler’s hands. Tyler has bitten half of it, which, gross, but Josh has probably used Tyler’s toothbrush before, so Tyler lets him.

Josh puts the berry in his mouth with his thumb and pointer finger, then licks red juice off his hand. Tyler looks away, but turns back when Josh says, “You’re right. Let down again. Again!” As if they’ve personally offended him. “We’ll have to try again, except with vegetables next time.”

Tyler has absolutely no interest in doing this with vegetables.

“Yeah, alright,” he says.

Now, as Josh leans back against Tyler’s dilapidated couch with his legs stretched out over the blanket they’ve lain down, he picks up his left leg and throws it over Tyler’s.

Josh yawns loudly, and reaches over so he can run his fingers through Tyler’s hair. His leg feels awkward on Tyler’s thigh through his pajamas, and Tyler leans his head back against the couch cushion when Josh’s fingers press into the base of his skull.

“Tyler, Tyler. You’re so tense.”

Tyler turns his cheek against the cushion so he can look at Josh, feels his mouth a little open like he’s going to say something. Josh still has some of his hair between his fingers.

Instead of saying anything at all, Tyler moves closer to Josh, so that their shoulders are pressed together and their heads are closer against the couch.

Josh, who has a house of his own, has not left Tyler’s apartment in two weeks.

He is not a good roommate—Tyler knows this from tour experience. If he’s being honest, neither of them are particularly good roommates, so it evens out.

Josh goes to bed on the pull-out in the living room at entirely different hours every night, ranging from six pm to six am, and leaves water all over the floor when he gets out of the shower. He is polite enough to wear headphones, but his music is so deafening it barely makes a difference.

Josh also calls his family, loudly and often, which Tyler immediately feels guilty for complaining about.

“You have a house, you know,” Tyler says. Josh is lying on Tyler’s bed with his head hanging off the edge and his phone stretched out in the air above him.

Chances of Josh dropping his phone on his own face in the next 15 minutes: 60 percent.

“You’re right. I do. I simply—” Josh puts on an exaggerated southern accent now, “couldn’t leave you alone like this. I absolutely had to be here.” Josh is grinning, but Tyler doesn’t think he’s kidding.

And, okay. Tyler’s also not a great roommate. Rooming with Tyler always seems to make Josh more worried, in general. Tyler locks himself in his room a lot, and he’s antisocial, and he writes, and he should propose activities more, probably.

It’s just that getting off tour is hard for him. Nothing seems real. Tyler’s not a fan of change, and a tour is just long enough for him to adjust to it and then have to suffer through the readjustment of real life once he gets back to it.

Tyler sits down on the bed next to Josh, and Josh immediately sits up and lays his head on Tyler’s chest. God, Tyler wishes Josh wouldn’t do that. He’s so overly touchy, clingy in a way that's tolerable for a few days and then gets to be so much that Tyler can’t even think when Josh is in the room, when he’s trying to write.

Josh will say, “Are you writing?” as he sprawls across Tyler and Tyler’s bed like they’re 12 year old girls, will put his hand warm on Tyler’s hip while Tyler tries to write words about anything else.

Tyler hasn’t written anything he wants to sing in weeks.

“Maybe,” says Tyler, “we could go out to eat. In the city.”

“Alright,” says Josh. He sounds suspicious. This is fair, because Tyler’s pretty sure he’s never asked Josh to go out to eat, ever. Tyler hopes this will get Josh to stop worrying about him.

“Or for drinks or something.”

“Alright,” says Josh again.

Tyler picks the closest bar that still counts as ‘in the city’. Columbus is not very big—all parts of Columbus still feel like Ohio.

The bar is dark and crowded even for a Friday night, and Tyler immediately wishes they hadn’t gone out at all.

Josh is making friends with the man sitting next to them at the bar, telling him how he’s a drummer. The desire Josh has to share his life story with every person he meets on the street will never make sense to Tyler.

Josh has a much higher alcohol tolerance than Tyler, but he is also comfortable drinking more. This is why they have to take a cab.

“Thank God we took the bus in,” says Josh. Staring up at the car’s roof, Tyler mumbles something about saying the Lord’s name in vain.

Instead of pushing himself up from his slumped position against the leather seat, Josh sinks even lower and half lays down sideways, so both of his hands are pressed against Tyler’s leg.

“I,” says Josh against Tyler’s jeans, “Do not remember what I was going to say.” Tyler pushes one of his hands through Josh’s hair. Josh very recently decided he should dye it. Tyler doesn’t like it. His hair is stiff and pale in Tyler’s fingers, and his face looks different with it. At least he hasn’t dyed it pink.

“I think it looks cool,” says Josh, annoyed. His breath smells like alcohol. “Oh,” says Tyler. He didn’t realize Josh knew he preferred it before.

“Bleach isn’t good for it. I liked it better before, it’s all stiff now.” Now that he’s talking about it, he might as well say it.

Josh has a really sharp chin, and it’s digging into Tyler’s leg. If Josh doesn’t move his head, Tyler is going to shove it off himself. He brings his hand down from where it was resting in Josh’s hair and shoves at his face, just generally, because he can’t really see in the dark.

He misses and pushes at Josh’s mouth, when instead of moving, Josh regresses to age six and licks Tyler’s hand. “Josh, please, that’s disgusting,” Tyler says in the dark, and then Josh has several of Tyler’s fingers in his mouth, and Tyler can feel Josh’s tongue.

It’s wet and smooth, and Tyler wants to know what sin he committed that Josh is drunk enough to molest him in the back of a cab at one in the morning.

Josh is drunker than he thought, Tyler realizes. When he pulls off, when Tyler has done absolutely nothing about it except stare, there’s just enough light to illuminate Tyler’s fingers where Josh’s mouth was on them.

The cab stops as Josh reaches up for something.

“Alright,” says Josh, in response to absolutely nothing. Tyler pays and offers Josh his hand, Josh taking it with clammy palms.

“There are far too many steps in your apartment building. We should send angry emails to your landlord. Or leave messages in his mailbox. Or, we could—” Josh is slurring some of his words.

“Yeah, uh-huh, I agree, could you help me out by walking a little, you’re incredibly heavy—”

“Tyler, are you calling me fat?”

“You’re big-boned, please help me open this door—”

Tyler kept the light on when he left earlier, and now the lamp in the living room is hurting his eyes. He feels slow and out of it, drunk, and his hand still feels damp.

Josh sits down on the couch, bouncing a little. Tyler sits next to him. It’s too late to watch television, and he wants to go to bed, but he also wants to be a good friend and turn Josh onto his side when he falls asleep.

It is hard to tell exactly how drunk Josh is at any given time, since Josh tends to manage conversation fairly well no matter how much alcohol he’s consumed, but he gets more impulsive and clingy and honest, and when he’s entirely smashed, he mostly just lays around.

This is probably first-stage drunk Josh, so that’s good. Tyler hates dealing with extremely drunk, last-stage Josh.

First-stage Josh is not staying on his side of the couch. “You have no sense of personal space,” says Tyler, and whatever else he was going to say gets cut off as Josh rolls so his entire side is pressed up against Tyler’s.

“Tyler,” murmurs Josh, directly against the shell of Tyler’s ear, and Tyler jumps a little, “can’t you calm down for a minute? You’re supposed to be buzzed, this was supposed to be…” Josh’s hands are tugging on Tyler’s hair the base of his skull, and Tyler shuts his eyes and tilts his head back against the couch.

They’re good, like this. It almost reminds Tyler of times when they’ve come off the stage and they’re still sweaty from the stage lights, exhausted and pushed up against each other on uncomfortable car seats or the pleather couch of a tour bus.

“I am, I’m relaxed,” and to prove it, Tyler blindly puts his hand back where it was ten minutes ago, in the bleached section of Josh’s hair. They're in an awkward position, arms crossed over each other, both sitting upright.

“Right,” says Josh, skeptically, and Tyler is exasperated, and when he pulls up hard on the section of Josh’s hair he has in his hands, he’s watching as Josh’s mouth falls open a little and his eyelids flutter.

“Tyler,” says Josh, and he’s so _so _close, one leg moved so it’s on Tyler’s other side. This is not how Tyler meant for this to go, with Josh leaning over him like this.

“I,” says Tyler, and tries to pull Josh off him again. The air feels hot. Josh drops his head and gasps hotly on the high collar of Tyler’s shirt. He’s straddling Tyler and when he looks up, their noses brush against each other.

One of Josh’s hands has moved from the base of Tyler’s neck to his hip at some point, and his fingers are digging into the bones. It’s going to bruise.

“Ah,” says Josh, and this time it’s directly against Tyler’s mouth, the sound forming shapes on Tyler’s lips and jaw. Tyler thinks, _no_, and forgets to say it.

Instead, into the silence of the room broken only by their breathing, he says, “What are you doing?” He means for it to sound shocked, but Josh’s hand has tightened on his hip bone and his breath hitches on the last syllable.

Josh moves his mouth from breathing on Tyler’s to the space under his ear, kissing him there. Tyler gasps, loud and sharp and breaking. Josh is breathing into the shadow of his jaw, licking at the bone, and Tyler can’t think.

Tyler can hear himself panting, and when Josh moves from kissing his neck to kissing his mouth Tyler feels himself arch up into Josh’s hands.

“God, fuck, you sound so hot—” Josh says, and pushes Tyler’s hips back into the couch cushion as Tyler turns his neck sharply and shudders, hands scrambling at the fabric, his stomach hot and twisting when Josh kisses him again.

He shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, and it’s going to mess them up for the rest of their lives.

They’re drunk on cheap beer and on each other, and Josh’s tongue is in his mouth, and Tyler’s so hard that when Josh presses his hips rough and grinding against Tyler’s, Tyler is fairly sure he could come from this alone, on the couch like this in his pants.

Josh is growling something into Tyler’s mouth, and Tyler has absolutely no idea what he’s saying, just that Josh is pressed against his thigh and his hands are on Tyler’s belt. The room is hazy, and Josh’s hands are shaking where they’re curled around Tyler’s belt loops near his zipper.

Tyler doesn’t want this, he doesn't, and when he wakes up he’s going to apologize to himself and to God and he’s going to pretend this never happened, he’s going to stop it now, in a second he will once Josh gets up and moves his hands and they say it’s a mistake.

Josh reaches for Tyler’s zipper, and Tyler brings his hand down to push Josh away, but hesitates. Even now, drunk, pupils blown so Tyler can only see the black of his eyes, Josh removes his hand, but when he puts it back down away against Tyler’s thigh Tyler bucks up and moans low and Josh exhales and palms Tyler through his jeans.

It’s enough, it’s enough, and Tyler is going to come if Josh doesn’t stop. Josh looks pale, lit up by streetlight since they turned the lamp off, his mouth open and parted and his bottom lip swollen.

There’s heat at the base of Tyler’s spine, crawling up his neck and his arms, and if Josh would just kiss him again, bite at his neck, he would—“You should, you’ve gotta see yourself, Tyler, I want to touch you, you should let me like this, why do you always—”. Josh cuts himself off when he pulls his head up and grabs Tyler’s jaw, friction against Tyler’s cock while he kisses him rough and pushes him back into the couch.

Tyler whines and shoves back against him; gasps with his lip pulled between his teeth. He comes wet and sticky in his jeans against Josh. “Did you,” says Josh, and Tyler feels his cheeks heat up, embarrassed, but Josh just moans into Tyler’s neck and pushes himself into his own hand. Josh shakes when he comes, maybe a minute later.

“I—” whispers Josh, after an interval of complete silence. Tyler’s hands are still fisted on the edge of the couch cushions. When Josh pulls his face up from Tyler’s neck, his eyes look out of focus, and he’s not smiling.

It’s too dark for Tyler to make out all of Josh’s face, but the corner of his mouth is twisted down.

“You can’t stay here,” says Tyler, more harshly than he means to. His high is quickly turning into panic. Josh doesn’t get angry very easily, especially not when he’s drunk. At this, though, Josh frowns more deeply, moving his weight from where his legs bracketed Tyler’s hips to sitting next to him again.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you should go back to your house. I can call you a cab.”

“Tyler, what the fuck? Are you kicking me out at two in the morning?” Josh is stumbling over his words and he looks exhausted, pulling at the fabric of his shirt, pupils still over-large even in the dim light.

Tyler is about to say no, he’s not kicking Josh out, he just thinks Josh should go, would be happier in his own bed, but Tyler is quiet for long enough that he can feel Josh tense up next to him.

“No, you can stay, just.” Tyler feels a bit like he’s going to cry. “I’ll see you later.”

Josh’s eyes are shut tight.

“Yeah, Tyler. Goodnight.”

When Tyler wakes up, Josh is not there, and he has not left a note. The pullout looks exactly like it did when Tyler came back from tour: sheet-less and untouched. Josh’s backpack is gone.

There is a short second after Tyler realizes that Josh is gone in which Tyler never wants to see Josh again.

Tyler’s angry; he’s furious, unforgivable. Josh should have stayed at his own house and left Tyler alone for once in his life. Josh makes wretched decisions, drunk or not, and Tyler knows this, Josh did it as a joke, and Tyler was meant to push him off from the beginning.

His body feels foreign and filthy underneath the skin. Tyler’s not gay, and he hates that he’s thinking about it at all. He’s had girlfriends, one back in high school and one or two after.

He doesn’t think about Josh this way, so it didn’t happen. Human error, something. They were drunk, and it was an accident, and Tyler is never going to think about it again because it doesn’t matter.

The part of his brain that’s made up of Sunday school and sermons wonders briefly what his church says about homosexuality, but he can’t remember. It’s not inherently a sin; he can’t remember if it’s okay to act on it, he _can’t_.

He sits down right next to where he got out of bed, wrapping his arms around his knees. The wood floor is cold on the underside of his legs.

He starts to think about whether or not he’s sitting on his floor staring at nothing mostly because he’s shocked at himself or if he’s doing this because he’s afraid of ruining the only good friendship he’s had in years. If he ignores the first one, him and Josh will be okay.

So: it never happened.

It doesn’t matter, he’s decided, so it never happened, and he will never mention this to Josh again.

He is going to forget the exact version of himself that made him feel like that, made him want Josh to press his mouth and hands up against Tyler’s jaw, his throat, and then he won’t ever have to worry about blurry sins messing up his peripheral vision.

He doesn’t text Josh for three days.

This isn’t so bad, because it’s not the first time it’s occurred. Tyler thinks back to maybe a year ago, when they got in fights over music notes and things that seem fuzzy in his mind now. Tyler would stop texting Josh for days, and they always managed it in the end.

They needed a break; Josh had been staying with him for so long that they were bound to get sick of each other. Josh is out, so Tyler is writing now.

Friends need breaks.

It’s all abstract, what he’s writing, none of it about other people and only about himself. He feels buried, drowned in his own thoughts. He hasn’t felt this way in over a year.

When three days have passed, he texts Josh:

_What’s up?_

_I’ve been writing some stuff down that I think we could work on._

_We have to have a tracklist at some point._

Josh waits two hours and twenty-four minutes before responding:

_sure. come over. roommate’s out._

When Tyler arrives at Josh’s house, the door is unlocked, and Tyler steps in to see Josh playing video games with a blanket half over him, wearing pajamas in the early afternoon.

Tyler, breathing in once sharply, says “Hi,” and tries to smile in Josh’s general direction without looking at him. In response, Josh announces “Tyler!” but it still sounds guarded.

“So,” says Tyler, sitting down on a chair next to the sofa, “I have some new music.”

“Yeah?” Josh answers without looking up. “What’s it about? Feeling inspired lately?”

Instead of answering, Tyler pulls out the folder he’s put the scrap pieces of paper and sticky notes in. Josh makes no move to get up, so Tyler stands to hand it to him.

Opening the folder, Josh glances at the paper. “They look good, Tyler. Can I photocopy some of them so I can try drafting some of the music?”

“Yeah, yeah,” mumbles Tyler, and hurries to take the folder back from Josh.

“I wish you would’ve waited for me. It’s always harder to write music over lyrics that have already been done, you know that.” Josh is looking back at the TV, but he doesn’t sound angry or annoyed.

Abruptly, Tyler wants to ask if they’re okay. However, if he does this, it will be Bringing It Up Again, so he stays quiet.

“So, Tyler. Here on a Sunday morning. Shouldn't you be at church, or something?”

Tyler almost says, “Shouldn’t you?”

What he actually does rip a corner in the folder he needs to remember to photocopy and says, “I’m going after this, I just wanted to drop these by,” while looking at Josh’s carpet.

Josh shoots something on the TV. “Dressed up.”

Tyler realizes Josh is making fun of him, because Tyler is wearing jeans and old sneakers. He probably looks like he hasn’t showered in a while. He hasn’t, but he’ll die before he tells this to Josh.

“I’m wearing a collared shirt.”

“That you wore to your middle school graduation.”

“I did not!”

“It looks like it—” Josh starts, but he cracks up half-way through whatever he’s going to say next about Tyler’s (non-existent) middle-school graduation.

Tyler feels something unknot in his stomach when Josh laughs.

“Josh, I’ve got to go. I’ll come back in a few hours, and we can look at it, if you want.”

Leaning back into the cushion, Josh says “Yeah, alright.”

What Tyler will never tell Josh is that he meets Jenna at church, right after leaving Josh’s.

+

Tyler is coming out of the door after the service and he quite literally runs into her as they both try to get out of the same side, him not looking and colliding into her. She’s wearing a flowery dress, hair in a tight bun, and she has pale pink lips.

“Sorry, gosh, sorry,” she says, smiling politely and stepping back so Tyler can get through. Tyler smiles back and says “Ladies first,” because he thinks he knows how this will go.

They walk into the parking lot and sit on the bench while Jenna tells him she’s waiting for her friend to pick her up. Jenna works at a nearby college and teaches European history, which Tyler isn’t expecting, because she looks his age. This is her third year as a professor. She smells like flowers and Tyler thinks he should want to write about this.

He gets to Josh’s an hour later than he said he would, because Jenna gives him her number, and then tells him about her family. Tyler wants to hear. She has bright eyes and blonde hair and flushes when Tyler tells her he likes her dress.

When he walks back in the door at Josh’s, Josh calls, “Where have you been?” and Tyler says, loudly, “Met a girl!”

“You what?”

And then he stops. He’s seconds away from telling Josh about Jenna, and he should. His parents will love Jenna. Tyler may be thinking a bit far in advance, but his mother always wanted a daughter, and she certainly wants Tyler to get married.

He’s known her for less than an hour. He doesn’t know her last name, but he knows what he wants to do, theoretically. For some reason, he can’t tell this to Josh. He feels restless when he thinks about it; he doesn’t want to answer questions.

So, instead, Tyler grins and sets down his phone on the countertop. “Picking up women at church is my favorite pastime.”

Josh, walking into the kitchen, rolls his eyes so far back into his head they turn white.

“Right, Tyler. Anyways. I hope you had fun.”

“You haven't been to church in so long. Remember when we used to go together? Before the tour? We would go during sometimes, too, when we were staying in motels.”

“I go sometimes. Just less than I used to. Also, I only went to church with you on tour because you made me.”

“Maybe you should go more.”

Josh stops what he's doing. He doesn't freeze, exactly, or even shift to look at Tyler, he just stops. “Why, am I falling into sin in your eyes? I don’t have to go to believe, you know. I’m just tired in the mornings, is all. Terribly lazy. I can only hope I won’t be sent to hell.”

Tyler isn’t an idiot. Josh is trying to make light of this, because the conversation could quickly go bad. He doesn’t like the way Josh says sin, pronounced against the rest of the sentence, and it makes his cheeks flush. He doesn’t take the out.

“You pray, though.”

“Tyler.”

Tyler turns away from him and opens the fridge.

“Did you make copies of the songs?”

No, he didn’t. He doesn’t turn around, and Josh sets his drink down loudly against the granite.

“I’m sorry, I forgot, I’ll go do it now.”

“Fuck, Tyler, it’s fine, just leave it. Do it later. Sleep, you look terrible. Why do you always look terrible?”

Tyler tries to not feel offended by this. “I’ve been busy writing.”

“Did you not have time to sleep or shower in the past week?”

Annoyed, Tyler protests, “It hasn’t been a week.”

“Whatever. Sleep in the guest room for a few hours.”

Tyler leaves the kitchen with Josh standing in the corner rubbing his palms against his eyes.

+

Tyler meets Jenna a few days later for coffee and tells Josh he’s meeting a family friend. He’s not exactly sure what’s compelling him to lie, but it’s strong. He’ll tell Josh soon.

They go to eat at the little coffee shop right outside of the city, where Tyler and Jenna both realize they have the same girly drink order.

She tells him about how she got her job at the college, and how much she loves her students. She laughs across the table with a milk-moustache while telling a story about how she brought her cat into class one time and it knocked everything off the desk.

At this exact moment, she is everything Tyler wants and should want. He thinks that this is what love at first sight must feel like.

“So, Tyler.” It sounds a bit odd coming out of her mouth, like it’s accented. “What is it that you do?”

“Oh, you know. I work in the music industry.” Even before he had any sort of name recognition, Tyler learned people are far more likely to like you if you don’t say you’re actually an artist.

People seem to be unable to remove you from the starving musician image in their head, so usually Tyler will wait until he’s somehow able to prove he’s at least moderately successful.

“What kind of stuff do you do? For how long?”

“I’m actually a recording artist. Don’t worry, though I’m not like, a struggling singer. I’m mostly successful.”

“How successful? Do you think I’ve heard your stuff before?”

“Maybe,” says Tyler. “We're Twenty One Pilots.”

“That sounds a little familiar. You all are local, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She grins. “Well, one member of Twenty One Pilots, it’s very nice to meet you. How many members of your band are there?”

“Well, there used to be three including me, but then they left, so it’s now a two-person band, although the newest member wasn’t part of the original three. He’s my drummer, his name is Josh. He grew up here too.” Tyler starts to feel like he’s rambling.

“A two-person band? I’ve never heard of that!”

“Who knows,” says Tyler, “we might be the first.” (They’re not, but it doesn’t matter.)

Jenna is beautiful, smart, and interesting.

They go on four unofficial dates over the span of a month before he gets over himself enough to tell Josh.

“I think you’d like her,” says Tyler while they’re eating macaroni out of a big plastic bowl together and sitting on Josh’s counter.

Josh licks the spoon and puts it back in the bowl just to annoy him. “What did you say her name was again?”

Scowling, Tyler puts his own spoon down. “Jenna.”

“Hmm,” says Josh, uninterestedly. “So is she officially your girlfriend?”

Tyler, who hasn’t really thought about officiality yet, responds, “Um.”

Josh looks unimpressed.

“I mean,” presses Tyler, “I haven’t really. Asked? Do you ask someone to officially date you, or do you both just assume it? I think we might be. It’s only been a month, though.”

Shrugging, Josh says, “I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re going to have to meet her soon, because I said she could come watch us practice. I’m not sure she totally believes I have a real job.”

“You don’t.” Josh pauses. “Do we even have new music to practice in front of her?”

Tyler, knowing he’s won now, says, “Of course!”

It turns out they don’t, which is something they realize maybe two hours before Jenna is supposed to show up.

“Maybe,” says Josh, muffled because his head is under blankets, “we could just combine two of our older songs and pretend it’s something new? Or, we could hope that she hasn’t listened to any of our music and play an older one we actually know.”

“I assume she’s listened to our music.”

“Maybe not, though! Let’s take a chance. Live life on the edge, Tyler.”

Jenna knocks on the door ten minutes early, which would be nice in other circumstances, but is unfortunate now because they haven’t cleaned up in several days.

The first thing she says when she walks in is “Tyler, I thought you lived in an apartment. Do you live with Josh?”

She asks this because the couch has blankets and pillows all over it.

Josh, who is terrible and unhelpful, starts laughing immediately.

Tyler shuts his eyes and thinks about how he hasn’t been back to his own apartment in almost a week.

“No, I don’t, I was just staying with him for a bit while we were recording music together. He has an actual house, so it’s nicer, and also his roommate is never here, so—”

“He’s defensive about it, you know. It’s because he really just can’t bear to let me out of his sight,” says Josh dramatically, cutting him off and standing up. “Jenna! So nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a bit about you, but never enough.”

Jenna looks charmed. “You must be Josh!”

“The one and only.”

“I’ve heard more than a bit about you.”

“Alright,” Tyler interrupts. “So, since we weren’t sure about performing our really new stuff—” “Because it doesn’t exist,” adds Josh, “—we’re just going to show you some of our older stuff, I guess.”

Jenna either genuinely enjoys their songs or she’s just very polite. “You have a beautiful voice, and Josh, you’re so talented. I don’t really know what I’m talking about, of course, but it looks cool.”

“He’s not that good,” says Tyler.

“How long exactly have you two known each other?”

Josh answers, “Our entire life. We’re twins, actually.”

Jenna says, “What?”

“Josh, shut up. He’s kidding, a few years. I needed a drummer, and he was there. I thought I knew him from somewhere.”

“Yes, it was very romantic. He said to me, ‘Have I seen you before? I feel like I have.’ I felt like I was in a movie on Lifetime. Not a rom-com, though.”

“No, not a rom-com,” agrees Jenna. “He’s too dramatic for that.”

Josh squints his eyes and cracks up.

Tyler wants to bang his head against the wall, but Jenna is laughing and watching.

+

Josh and Jenna get along, a bit like brother and sister. Josh makes Jenna laugh. Tyler still can’t tell how much of their relationship is based on their mutual desire to please Tyler. Jenna: most of it. Tyler thinks Josh doesn’t really care.

Mostly, everything stays the same. Jenna is easy to please, quiet, and fun to be around. She’s understanding when he and Josh have to travel for work.

His parents love her. His mother tells him she’s perfect, which Tyler already knows. They go to church together and Tyler’s mother makes a big deal about how good she is and how beautiful they look together.

Their relationship is stable and unmoving, and it lasts smoothly for months under the same pattern. About four dates a month, and Jenna will support him when they go to shows locally and Tyler will call her when they have to drive or fly somewhere she can’t go because she can’t miss class.

“You know,” Josh says to him one evening, “you either marry or break up with every person you date.”

Tyler feels kind of horrified. Josh smirks.

“We haven’t been dating for that long, Josh. Maybe eight months. Less.”

“Sign of a good boyfriend, knowing how long you have been together. How ever will you know when your one-year anniversary is coming up?”

“I’ll—” This has not crossed Tyler’s mind until now. “She’ll know, and I’ll ask her what she wants to do. She probably doesn’t remember either, Josh. We never really officially started going out, so it’s not going to be a big deal.”

“Are you sure it doesn’t matter? It does to her, I’m sure.”

Tyler’s not sure what Josh is doing, picking at him like this. He twists his fingers in his lap. “What are you talking about, why are you being so annoying?”

Josh will never come out and say what’s wrong unless it’s the only way out. Every time Josh gets upset about something, he just riles Tyler up enough until Tyler’s just as pissed off as he is and they can fight about whatever Josh really wants to fight about.

It is, in Tyler’s opinion, a terrible way to solve arguments.

Josh’s lip twists.

They're sitting on opposite sides of Josh’s couch, not paying attention to the movie playing.

“I’m not being pissy, I’m just wondering. Are you guys planning on moving forward? Just having fun?”

“Does it matter? Is it even any of your business?”

“Well, it is once it’s lasted this long. Your relationships affect me too, Tyler. We work together. Think of me as taking a business standpoint on this.”

“What? Are you serious? My being in a relationship is not going to somehow cut our profit.” Tyler has no idea where this is coming from.

“Well, it’s not yet. What if she wants you to stop touring? What will you do then?”

Tyler is fairly sure Jenna is not going to ask him to stop touring, but he also thinks Josh knows this too.

Josh doesn’t wait for a response before continuing, “I was talking with her the other day, and she was telling me how she just bought a new house.”

“Oh, yeah,” agrees Tyler. He kind of remembers her showing him a few pictures and asking if he had any strong opinions about which place to put the down payment on.

“She was saying, you know, when you and her move in together, which—”

“When we what?”

“That’s what I thought.” Josh looks cat-like in this light, lazy and unsurprised.

“We haven’t really talked about it before. I didn’t think she would want to move in together unless we were getting married.”

“Oh, she definitely wouldn’t.”

Oh. _Oh_.

Josh is watching him, stretching his arms up so his shirt rides up and Tyler can see his skin. Tyler looks away sharply.

“I wasn’t planning on proposing anytime soon.” He feels anxious, like he has to prove this to Josh somehow.

“Tyler, Tyler, I didn't think you were.” Josh leans in closer to Tyler like he wants to say something else. “I just wanted to let you know. You don’t have to reassure me, it doesn’t make a difference. She’s thinking about it.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t make a difference? Didn’t you just say that it would? Same business.” Tyler feels confused, like he’s being manipulated.

“Not about business. I just didn’t think you were considering marriage anytime soon.”

No, Josh is right, he hasn’t.

Theoretically, sure, but actually getting married and starting a family seems huge and overwhelming right now. “I still have a life ahead of me, I can’t settle now, I can’t—”

“God, Tyler, calm down, I didn’t mean for you to have a panic attack, I just wanted to know where you stood.”

Tyler can himself breath rapidly. “I really like her, I do, she’s wonderful, I just think that maybe we should have more time to figure out what we want to do, I think we’re good the way we are now, and—”

At this, Josh reaches over and puts his hand on Tyler’s cheek, cupping his jaw. “It’s fine, I’m sure she’ll wait, she’s great like that.”

Tyler leans into him, Josh’s thumb tracing his cheekbone. He thinks Josh just insulted him, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Maybe I’ll talk to her tomorrow about it, or something,” Tyler says into Josh’s hand. He can feel his own heartbeat.

“You might, yeah,” says Josh, but he sounds shaky.

Josh has moved so he’s right up next to Tyler, his fingers still pressing at Tyler’s jawline. Tyler is suddenly, viscerally reminded of Josh leaning over him months ago, hands on him like this. Josh smells faintly of sweat and shower soap, and Tyler feels claustrophobic, so he shuts his eyes against it.

“Can I stay here tonight?”

Josh looks alarmed. No, that’s not what he meant, he-- “It’s just late, I don’t want to have to drive home.”

“Yeah,” says Josh, “of course, you stay here so much you barely have to ask anymore,” and lets out a breathy laugh that Tyler can feel against his mouth.

“I’m going to go put on pajamas,” says Tyler, but he doesn’t move.

“Yeah,” says Josh again, but like it’s an afterthought. Josh drops his hand from Tyler’s neck in one long movement, and his fingers feel like they’re burning Tyler’s skin.

Tyler stands up. “Yeah, I’ll see you in the morning, Josh.”

“Mm-hmm.”

+

He doesn’t end up asking about Jenna’s new house. Instead, Jenna tells him it’s finally time for him to meet her friends. Most of her friends are professors, old students, and people that she knows from church.

“A rocking crowd,” says Josh, as Tyler tells him about this over the phone the next afternoon.

“How interesting that you’d say that, Josh, I knew this would appeal to you, which is why I’ve asked if you could come.”

“You asked your girlfriend if I could come with you two to meet friends? Tyler, why?”

“Well, I said you didn’t have many.” He can hear Josh sigh across the line.

“Did you not—how is that not weird to you?”

Tyler can’t really see Josh’s point. “Also, technically, you’re one of her friends, and I’m meeting all of them, or the most important ones anyways, so I’m sure you count.”

“I’m suddenly very busy. Something’s come up. I’m deathly ill, my grandmother is sick, my dog is vomiting on the carpet.”

Tyler really wasn’t expecting this. He feels kind of hurt. Jenna had seemed all right with it when he asked, but she was all right with everything.

And now he’s worried that she just agrees with stuff he says to be polite. She wouldn’t. If she didn’t want Josh to come, she would have said so.

He’s thinking about a lot of things at once, so all that comes out is, “You don’t have a dog.”

“Okay, Tyler, but I’m still not going.” He sounds tired over the phone, and Tyler can hear him tapping something against the counter.

“Can I come by after?” Tyler knows he sounds whiny, but he doesn’t want to go back home after this and he can’t go to Jenna’s.

Josh hums. “You’re so clingy, Tyler. I should lock my door.”

“I know where you hide your key.”

+

Jenna meets Tyler there, because she texts him before and says she’s going to a friend's house afterwards for a girl’s night.

The restaurant they go to is slightly more fancy than Tyler planned for, and he is incredibly glad he didn’t wear jeans when he walks in the door. Jenna is there with about seven of her friends.

A man who looks like he’s probably a fellow professor begins, “I’m guessing you’re Tyler,” and holds out his hand for Tyler to shake.

They all get put in a corner table in a separate room, which is good, because Jenna’s friends are kind of loud. A bubbly brunette lady Jenna knows from church asks him, “So where did you go to school?”

“Um,” says Tyler, who realizes he’s about five seconds from having to answer the College Question, “I was home-schooled. My family’s pretty religious, so. It was okay though, and I’m really close to them.”

“Yeah?” She says. “So where did you go to college after?”

“I haven’t. After high school, I went straight into the music industry with some of my friends. It’s worked out for me, but I’m not crossing school off my list or anything.”

She replies, “Awesome!” like she means it, which is better than most responses Tyler has gotten before.

Jenna leans across the table and says, “Speaking of music industry friends, was Josh not able to come?”

“He was busy.”

Gesturing to the table at large, Jenna announces, “You are all missing out on Tyler’s better half.”

There’s scattered laughter as Jenna looks at Tyler to continue.

“My drummer—my only other bandmate, actually—was going to come with us tonight, but something came up.”

The brunette says, “I’m sure we’ll meet him later!”

Jenna’s friends are pleasant and normal. Maybe Tyler has spent too long around musicians, because by the end of hour three, he feels like he could pick out the tiny rips of the wallpaper in front of him in a wallpaper line-up.

One of Jenna’s old students, a boy named William, enthusiastically suggests the whole party could go out for drinks.

Tyler does not want to go out for drinks. Jenna says, bubbly, “Sure!”

He’s walking out of the restaurant on the way to the nearest bar (there’s only one close bar in the area that’s not a complete mess, and Jenna’s friends don’t seem like the type of people who are into dive bars) when William catches up with him.

William is small and skinny, with huge round glasses that he’s definitely wearing to make him look smarter than he actually is. “You’re pretty quiet.”

Trying not to grit his teeth, Tyler says, “Yeah, sorry.”

“No, I didn’t mean it as an insult,” stresses William, “I think it’s nice, I was just wondering if you were always this quiet.”

“I haven’t really thought about it that much. Maybe it’s because I haven’t hung around this many people in so long, it’s usually just me and my band.” He can probably tell this kid whatever he wants; he won’t see him again for months.

“Your two-person band?”

“Yeah, and Jenna, of course.” It’s not even midnight, but Tyler is honestly too tired to answer a lot of questions.

“So you’re used to dealing with really small groups of people? Don't you go on tours, and stuff?”

Tyler is fairly sure his answers are making his life sound incredibly depressing, and not what William, who looks like the kind of person who lives vicariously through celebrities, wants to hear. “Right, of course, but I haven’t in awhile. But I will in the next few months, because we’re working on a new album.”

“You are? Are you guys signed and everything?”

Mumbling something about how they almost are and hoping it sounds like yes, he steps into the bar. And sees Josh.

His mind whites out for a moment because he thinks he’s hallucinating. Josh is sitting down playing cards with two other guys Tyler doesn’t recognize, holding a glass of water.

If Josh was going to go out at all, this is the best and only option, so Tyler should be less surprised to see him here. Now, though, he has to make up an excuse to Jenna and her friends about why Josh is able to go out for drinks on his own but not join their dinner party other than “He didn’t feel like it.” Or, Tyler thinks, he could just tell Josh to leave.

That would probably make Josh stay even longer.

Making his way from the door to the booth Josh is sitting at, Tyler says, “Hello. Come here often?”

Josh turns around quickly and then starts giving Tyler a half-smile. “What a surprise to see you here, Tyler! It’s been so long.”

Josh immediately made a joke, which shows that Josh is uncomfortable. Good. Tyler is quickly evolving from confusion to annoyance. “So you could go out on your own, which you barely ever do, but couldn’t manage a dinner party?”

The two men Josh is sitting with also look distinctly uncomfortable. Josh smiles amiably over at them before responding to Tyler, an It’s-Fine kind of look that always makes Josh look stressed, and says, “Tyler, it would have been incredibly awkward.”

“It wouldn’t have been; people were asking where you were. You can meet them now, though.”

Josh looks up and says, “I think they’ve already seen me,” and turns away from Tyler, greeting Jenna.

Sounding surprised, she says, “Josh! What are you doing here?”

When Josh realizes there’s absolutely no chance of him getting back to his card game, he stands up and gives the men an apologetic nod. They look aggravated, but Josh doesn’t glance back as Jenna takes him back to their table.

They’re standing next to the table when Tyler chews on his lip as he says, “Josh was telling me he came here right after his…visit with his family.”

Smoothly, Josh says, “My grandparents are visiting. They also live in Ohio, but a few hours away. I figured by the time that was over it would have been a bit awkward to come to dinner.”

Jenna nods.

Josh makes Tyler nervous whenever he lies like that, like he doesn’t have to think about it.

She starts, “Well, now that you’re here, you can meet some of my friends if you’d like. If you’ve got the time.” She’s twisting her lip in her teeth; Tyler’s not sure why she seems upset.

“Of course,” says Josh. As Tyler turns to go get a chair, one of Jenna’s friends—a girl with a blonde braid—turns around. “Jenna,” she says, “Who’s this?”

“Meet Josh,” Jenna says, gesturing in Josh’s general direction. Tyler watches as Josh drags a chair across the wood floor. It makes a horrible screeching sound, and Josh winces. Once he’s standing in front of them all, he says, loud, “I’m mostly like Tyler, but better and funnier in almost every way.” Braid girl, who Tyler should absolutely know the name of by now, starts giggling.

Josh looks like he’s about to say something that’s either going to embarrass Tyler or give Tyler second-hand embarrassment, so Tyler touches Josh and pushes him in the direction of the chair he’s set down. Josh starts when Tyler presses against his shoulder, but sits. Tyler starts to feel slightly discomforted.

Josh is sat at the edge of the table, directly next to Braid girl and across from Tyler. Jenna, who walked in first and then told them all they should spice up the seating arrangement, is seated at the opposite end of the table.

Once Josh sits down, Braid Girl turns to him immediately. “I’m Marley.”

Josh says, “Like Bob Marley?”

“Exactly like Bob Marley. My parents were kind of hippies.”

“That’s awesome, I don't think I’ve ever met a Marley. Tell me, Marley—what brings you here? How do you know our Jenna?”

“I’m one of her students. I graduated two years ago, and now I work at the art gallery downtown.”

“I—” Josh stops for dramatic effect, “—know nothing about art.”

Marley laughs prettily and plays with her hair.

Tyler wishes Josh wouldn’t do this right now.

He knows that part of it is just Josh’s actual personality, but Josh is also pissed at him. Maybe it’s for dragging him away from his card game, maybe it’s for making him meet Jenna’s friends, but God, Josh knows Tyler won’t like it if the only impression he makes on Jenna’s friends is flirtatious.

Josh is impossible when he’s like this. He does this on tour sometimes, when he and Tyler get roped into doing something neither of them really wants to, making it difficult on all parties involved. The thing is, he hasn’t really turned it on Tyler before.

Last year, when they were touring, their manager pressured them into doing an interview when they hadn’t slept for nearly two days. Tyler had had a headache, and Josh had been carsick from hours in a hot bus, and both of them (although Josh in particular) had told Michael that they weren’t interested, but they would do one tomorrow first thing after they woke up.

Michael had told them absolutely not, and that it was a written interview, so the way they looked wouldn’t even matter.

Josh, who had vomited at the rest stop on the way there, had told Michael to go fuck himself, and that it wasn’t the way they looked, it was the fact that they hadn’t gotten any sleep in days and couldn’t bear to look another person in the face until they slept.

This had done absolutely nothing to stop the interview. They were under contract, and not popular enough to pull off ditching an interview and have it not be a mark on their records when they were trying to impress more important people than Michael.

The interview had been a complete disaster. Josh had been purposefully vague, cursed at least ten times when he was explicitly told not to, and spilled Coke all over the white leather couch.

Tyler very vividly remembers the interviewer asking when Josh had gotten started on drums, and Josh saying, “You know, I don’t quite remember. Do you play any musical instruments?” Which was something they absolutely could not afford to do when the size of their fan base was roughly equivalent to the population of a small elementary school, and probably still couldn’t.

When someone incredibly famous and infinitely more popular does something like this in an interview, it’s quirky and appealing, but when no one’s heard of you, everything is a first impression.

One bad interview and a magazine won’t contact you again for years, if at all. Sure, Josh and Tyler may have lost some press in the future, but Michael was absolutely furious. The worst of it was that Josh acted like he didn’t care.

Michael was convinced they were seconds away from fame and from making him more money than any of his old clients, and that one bad interview could destroy the entire thing. Josh got over himself, although he didn’t apologize, and Michael eventually calmed down.

Michael didn’t pressure them as much afterwards.

It’s not that Josh is manipulative, nothing like that. Josh just tends to have about six reasons for doing everything, and Tyler’s pretty sure the interview thing was to stop Michael from asking to give them interviews later in their career from a hospital bed. No, Josh isn’t that petty, so Tyler’s not sure why he feels like their relationship has tiny fractures in it right now.

It’s not getting any better.

Tyler flicks his eyes up again back to Marley and Josh, who are animatedly discussing a recent movie Tyler hasn’t seen.

William, who’s sitting next to him, taps him on the arm. “You okay, Tyler? You’ve been staring at nothing for, like, a while now.”

Tyler feels like he’s coming out of a daze. “Yeah, of course, I’m fine.” William nods. “I think a few of us are getting ready to go. You good to head out soon?”

Across him, Josh stands up. “I’m going to go to the bathroom before we go.”

“Me too,” says Tyler, and watches Josh’s mouth tighten.

Josh starts making his way towards the back of the room, and Tyler follows him.

The bathroom’s lights are blinding, and it’s completely empty except for them. Tyler turns towards Josh after he shuts the door. “Are you mad at me?”

Tyler can hear the pitch of his voice; he sounds stupid and upset.

Josh had looked annoyed in the dim room of the bar, but now he stands unhappy, washed out in the fluorescent glare of the bathroom. “I’m—no. God, Tyler, no, I’m sorry, I’m being a dick.”

Tyler shifts, uncertain. “I know you didn’t want to come, but Jenna really wants me—us—to like her friends, and I wish you would just try. We’re leaving now anyways, so I guess it doesn’t matter. You could have at least introduced yourself, though.”

“I will, next time. I—I’m so tired all the time, and I haven’t been around this many people in so long.”

Tyler understands exactly what Josh means, the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from spending months around one or two people and then spending hours around people you’ve never met before, even if that kind of atmosphere is your entire job. The first nights on tour are always the worst.

Suddenly, Tyler feels like he understands something. Stumbling, he says, “If you’re worried that I’m going to stop hanging out with you because I’m spending time with Jenna, that’s, that will never happen.”

Josh doesn’t really say anything, he just breathes out and waits for Tyler to finish.

“I would never, we work together so technically it would be impossible, and we’re about to spend more time together because we have to finish this album sometime—” Tyler is cut off, because Josh is kissing him, pressing Tyler up against the wall next to the door.

Tyler freezes. Josh’s lips are soft, and his chest is against Tyler’s. “Josh,” mutters Tyler, quiet and short, and Josh gasps and opens his mouth against Tyler’s. “Yeah,” Josh replies, as he licks his way into Tyler’s mouth.

Tyler opens in a mixture of shock and confusion, he can feel Josh’s tongue slide against his own, Jesus, why would he do this. Josh is breathing raggedly as they kiss, pushing one of his legs in between Tyler’s so that they’re even closer.

It’s too much, feeling the inside of Josh’s mouth, and Tyler feels like the bottom of his stomach has liquefied. He can feel the edges of Josh’s teeth, the stubble against his chin.

“Josh,” begins Tyler, but stops when Josh bites down on his lower lip, grabbing onto Josh’s arm for stability.

“We can’t, what are you doing, they’re right outside—” “Yeah,” says Josh again, which isn’t an answer, and kisses Tyler’s neck, making Tyler lean back and hit his head on the tile behind him.

Josh’s hands are too hot where they touch him.

Tyler can hear his own heavy breathing echo, can hear himself gasp when Josh moves his hands around Tyler’s ribcage and holds him there.

He shuts his eyes while Josh mouths at his neck, feeling lit up behind his eyelids, biting down on his lip where Josh had before so he doesn’t do something embarrassing like moan.

Kissing Josh now is different from when they made out sloppily on Tyler’s sofa months ago, because neither of them is drunk, and also, Tyler has a girlfriend and they’re in a bathroom stall.

Tyler can’t really process any of these things right now.

Josh pushes his leg forward and Tyler squirms under the pressure. Josh is going to leave a mark on Tyler’s neck, which can’t happen, and they have to get out of the bathroom before anyone comes to check on them.

Anyone could be Jenna.

He has a girlfriend, he knows, “Josh,” Tyler says, and it comes out too hazy and low, so Tyler just grabs him by his hair, which makes Josh hiss against his check. Josh is murmuring something, it sounds like “I love the way you say—” But Tyler’s feeling panicky now, arousal and adrenaline feeding each other.

“Please, we have to go, we weren’t going to do this again, Jesus Christ, Josh, please.” Tyler says this in the midst of rapid breathing, sounding incomprehensible.

“Yeah, no, yeah,” says Josh, and he releases Tyler from where he’d been holding him against the wall.

Tyler shivers and glances at him, not wanting to hold eye contact. Josh looks turned on, eyes dark, mouth red and bitten.

They're so obvious.

Tyler can feel all the places Josh touched him. He wants—he doesn’t know what he wants. He wants Josh to put his hands under his shirt, to untuck it and scrape his nails down Tyler’s sides so he leaves long red marks. Tyler shuts his eyes.

“Just for the record, Tyler, I was never worried you were going to spend more time with Jenna than me.”

Josh takes one step back, and then turns and walks out of the bathroom.

Tyler is not going to unpack that right now.

Not leaving the bathroom for about five minutes after seems like a good idea, right after sliding down the wall and sitting with his knees up to his chest and trying to think about anything else.

They weren’t going to do it again. They had never talked about it, but it was supposed to be implied, and Josh couldn’t just _break_ that.

They were so good, for months, it had been months since that, and fuck, Tyler’s so fucking hard from just kissing him that he wants to scream in frustration, how could he.

Yeah, how could he. Tyler wants to think, maybe, if Josh had even a little bit of self-control, they wouldn’t have ever done this, none of this had to do with Tyler, what was he supposed to do, anyways, push Josh away?

Sure, Tyler could have pushed Josh away—he knows Josh would have gone, too, if he had just asked—but. But Josh never should have done it in the first place.

Rubbing his knuckles over his eyes, Tyler stands up and walks across the tile to look at himself in the mirror.

His shirt is rumpled where Josh’s hands had grabbed it, his mouth looks red but hopefully not noticeable in the dim light of the bar, and Josh has left faint marks on Tyler’s neck.

Pulling up the collar of his shirt, Tyler swings the door open and walks back to their table.

Josh has started talking to Marley again, but he’s not even looking at her when he speaks; he’s glancing around the bar and around the table, distractedly pulling a napkin into little pieces on the table.

Tyler returns to his seat and takes a sip of his beer, too bitter and hoppy on his tongue.

Josh is saying distractedly, “Marley, what’s working at an art gallery like?” Marley makes a face that implies she’s been saying what working at an art gallery is like for the past five minutes.

At this, Marley turns and faces Tyler. “Tyler!” she exclaims, like she’s just seen him there. “It’s so interesting that you're a singer. Could you sing something? Or, like, what’s your favorite thing that you’ve written? Is it online? Could I look it up?”

“Could I... could I sing something? We're in a bar.” He doesn’t mean to be rude.

Josh moves his gaze from the spot on the wall, and when he takes a drink, Tyler carefully doesn’t stare at his mouth.

Marley has been saying something. “What?” says Tyler.

Josh is staring at him from lidded eyes across the table, but maybe Tyler’s imagining this.

“We, um. Yeah, you can buy our music.”

Marley looks excited. “Like, from iTunes and shit? You guys are legit!”

Tyler starts, “Well, you don’t have to be that legit to—” before Josh cuts him off. “Yeah, Marley, we're pretty legit.”

The conversation, if possible, goes downhill from there for the next ten minutes. Marley gets tired of their inattention quickly, leaving Tyler and Josh sitting across from each other at the end of the table.

Tyler doesn’t have anything to say, and the scratches in the wooden table are fascinating.

Finally, Jenna stands up. It’s about 11, Tyler thinks. “Guys,” she starts, and she looks radiant. She’s smiling from being around her friends and her skin is flushed. Tyler shuts his eyes and doesn’t open them for a few seconds. When he looks up, Josh is staring at him.

“We should probably get going,” says Jenna. “Thank you guys so much for coming, we had so much fun.” As they head out, she turns to Josh. “Josh, do you need a ride home? Either Tyler or I can drive you.” Josh says, “No, thanks, I drove here. See you later, Jenna.”

Josh leaves, having parked in the opposite direction and closer to the bar. Tyler and Jenna walk back in the direction of their restaurant. “Did you have fun?” says Jenna, soft.

“Yeah, I did.”

“Tyler, you always look so tired.”

“I know, I’m sorry, Josh—Josh tells me the same thing. It’s the album; I think it’s because I’m trying to write all the time. I had fun, though. Your friends are nice. The dinner was nice.”

“Everything’s nice, hmm?”

Tyler would think Jenna was picking on him, but she seems quiet as she says it, just wanting to understand. Tyler falls into a half-smile, and Jenna giggles. “You going back to Josh’s?” She asks.

Tyler isn’t sure. Most of his stuff is there, and God, he doesn’t like his apartment. “I think so, yeah.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Tyler.”

“Bye, Jen.”

She kisses him quickly, then reaches into her purse for her keys and walks toward her car.

The drive back is dark and feels fast. Josh’s house is silent and dark when Tyler walks in, although Josh should have only arrived about 15 minutes before Tyler.

When Tyler lets his keys clatter against the counter, Josh walks out. “I didn’t know if you were going to stay here tonight.”

“So much of my stuff is here now.”

Josh says, “Yeah, Tyler. You basically live here now.” His voice is cold.

Tyler takes a step back. “I didn’t mean. I can leave, if you want. I don't have to stay.”

Josh looks like he’s counting back from five in his head, which Tyler didn’t think this conversation required, but obviously he’s missing something. Nothing new there.

“I didn’t think you would want to.”

“Do you want to watch a movie or something?” He twists his hands together and looks back at Josh, resisting the urge to grab his things and bolt.

Tyler very carefully considered whether or not coming here was the correct move.

If he had gone home, he would have avoided whatever conversation they’re about to have, but it would’ve been worse in the long run. Going home would mean a mutual acknowledgement that something was wrong, so wrong that Tyler couldn’t face Josh long enough to grab his toothbrush.

For some reason he feels that if went back to his apartment Josh would win. He can’t articulate what, exactly, winning entails, or what kind of game his brain has rationalized out of the whole situation (it’s not a situation), but he’s not going to back down.

Tyler steadies his breathing. He’s in control.

“Do I want to—Tyler, Jesus. You can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what? What, exactly, am _I _doing?”

Josh’s nostrils flare unattractively. “Fuck off, Tyler. Don’t act like this is just me.” And it’s almost sickening, that he knows Tyler well enough to know what he’s keeping behind his teeth.

“It is. It is you, I’m not, I’m not the one who did any of this, you can’t blame me.” He hates that his voice is shaking.

“What do you mean I can’t blame you?” Josh’s voice raises with the last few words. “How is this possibly just me? This isn’t something we can just gloss over. You responded, every time, you didn’t push me away when I—” Josh stops himself and shuts his eyes for a second.

Tyler flinches. He doesn’t know what to say. He hasn’t seen Josh like this before, trying to keep calm like Tyler is a kid who doesn’t understand what he’s done is wrong.

He shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to keep looking at Josh. “I should have.”

“Right, yeah, you really seemed like you wanted to.”

“You don’t know what I want,” says Tyler, but it doesn't come out the way he wishes it did, and he sounds petulant even to himself. His nails are digging into his palms.

“You don’t know what you want,” responds Josh, sharply.

He opens his mouth to reply, but nothing he’s got is good enough. Of course he knows what he wants, he could say, and if he said it with his jaw clenched and the words bitten off he still doesn’t think Josh would believe him.

He could say: No, I don’t, but I do here. In this one instance, I know I can’t do this. And Josh would still shrug him off. Maybe he would say, ‘If you did know, Tyler, then maybe it wouldn’t have happened twice.’

Tyler could remind him how it didn’t actually happen twice. Maybe it happened no time at all. They didn’t sleep together, technically. This is the important thing.

Josh watches Tyler for a second, before he says: “Thought so.”

“We never slept together,” says Tyler, quickly.

“You’re right, I guess we didn’t.” Josh sounds bored, like Tyler is the most predictable person in the world.

“It happened months ago and we were drunk. This—this one, tonight, that was a mistake. It’s over.”

“There shouldn’t be anything to end, Tyler.”

“There’s not.” Tyler pauses. “I think maybe I’ll stay at my apartment.”

Josh doesn’t say anything, and Tyler almost trips over the rug as he goes to pick his keys up from the counter. He’s not going to test his luck and see if he can also get his toothbrush.

“Night,” Tyler says, mostly to Josh’s yard, because he doesn’t want to turn around from where he’s standing in the open doorway. Josh’s front yard is green-blue in starlight.

“Yeah,” Josh says.

+

Spending time in his own apartment reminds Tyler that not only does he still hate his apartment, he also has no food. His bed is unmade when he gets in, sheets pushed down to the bottom. His houseplant is really fully dead. Great.

He realizes, when he wakes up the next morning, that he has almost nothing here. He has some clothing, and he’s run out of things like ‘soap’ and ‘shampoo’ that he never bothered to replace. He could go get his things from Josh’s house.

Alternatively, he could go to the grocery store and avoid having to confront a majority of those issues for at least a week.

When he goes to the store, it takes him ages to find where toothpaste is. He doesn’t want to ask a staff member where it is, because he doesn’t like doing that, so he spends ten minutes looking for it. He grabs the first one he sees, which is some brightly colored children’s tube, but whatever.

Jenna is coming over later today and they’re going out to lunch. She says she wants to talk about the baby shower she’s throwing for her friends, and when Tyler can come up and meet her parents.

Tyler’s so tired he runs a stop light coming back from the store.

He thinks Josh would bring him back to life and kill him again if he died in a car accident; they’re about to record an album. His radio won't even turn on, and he thinks something messed up with the wiring. It was static-y for a few months, but now it’s gone out completely.

His car is old and he hasn’t replaced it since high school. He barely drives in it anymore. People drive him places on tours and he’ll call cabs once he’s there, and here, he uses it mostly to drive to Josh’s house and to go to the grocery store. There’s a permanent shaking sound that some mystery part of the car makes while he drives. It adds character.

As he pulls into his apartment lot, he thinks about how maybe he should pick up drinking coffee. All of the times he’s tried it before, though, and it just makes his hands shake. Maybe he should move to tea. Maybe, he thinks, he should move to alcohol. Level it up. His head twitches when he thinks about it; no one is his family is an alcoholic. He thinks it’s Sunday.

His guilt’s gone down like it does when he can’t remember what day of the week it is.

Tyler’s not completely unaware.

He knows most of his mood is dependent on his relationship with Josh, okay, this sometimes one-sided codependency thing they’ve got going on. It’s kind of like Josh is a full entire person and more, and Tyler is probably around 40 percent of a person most days and needs someone else to make up the other 60. On days like today he’s a strong 25.

The voice in his head that sounds like a mixture of Josh and his own father is telling him fractions make for easy deniability.

If Josh were here at this exact moment, though, Tyler would be staring at the window while Josh drove, and Tyler would say, “Maybe I should become an alcoholic,” in complete seriousness, and Josh would _know_ it wasn’t a joke, but he would laugh because it was still ridiculous. And somehow, it would help. He shouldn’t take himself so seriously.

He worries, possibly weekly, that Josh is going to wake up and leave him for another band or another friend. Not because he doesn’t understand, as Tyler is fairly sure Josh understands most things, but because he’ll get tired of it.

There’s a scene in his head that always has the same ending.

Josh will say to him, “Tyler,” and he’ll say it gently like he does when he’s having a conversation that even he won’t make a joke of. And then he’ll say; “I’ve taken another job.” Or, “I’ve found someone else I want to work with.” “I’m moving.” “I’m getting married, and I’m never going to see you again.”

Tyler oscillates between feeling hyper-aware of dependency and pretending it doesn’t exist.

He cannot take the risk. Months and months ago, when he and Josh got drunk on a couch and Josh left and then Tyler didn’t do anything for days, he thought that he might never talk to Josh again.

Tyler is afraid of hellfire in the abstract way that makes him think twice about things like drinking too much or wanting fame so badly it feels carved into his bones. He thinks this might be one of those things.

He tries to live by God every now and then, but maybe he’s just looking for consistency.

Jenna will be over in fifteen minutes, and he should put on something that not Josh’s—is it Josh’s?—old t-shirt and sweatpants. She would give him that polite, disappointed look and ask him if he needed to do laundry. She might even offer to help, which would somehow make it worse.

Jenna is so much _nicer_ than Josh, Tyler thinks. He should have started a band with Jenna. He thinks about texting Josh and telling him he’s kicking him out of the band, and that he has to teach Jenna to play drums.

He should wait a few hours. Him and Josh, they usually get over fights pretty quickly, but those fights are about music. Not these things. Ending a fight by deciding there’s nothing to fight over is putting an interesting twist on how long Tyler should wait before he texts Josh.

It’s been a few days since dinner. He’s going to wait until after lunch, so he just types it, and doesn’t press send.

+

The restaurant Jenna takes him to is small and modern. She likes the look of these kinds of things, he knows.

Lunch is quiet. Jenna is stressed about the baby shower, and seems to remember who she’s talking through partway through, and stops asking Tyler for advice. This was after the third time Tyler had been incapable of giving an opinion on color scheme. All pastel colors look the same, anyways.

She leans across the table, serious, having eaten part of her meal and folded her fork across her knife. Her hands are tucked under her chin. “Tyler. Are you alright?”

This is not the direction Tyler wanted the conversation to go.

“Yeah, of course. I’m fine. I told you earlier, I’m tired.”

“Right, yeah, but it seems worse. Are you and Josh fighting?”

Tyler twitches at this, and she must notice because she revises. “I mean,” she says, “I know you guys are alright, but both of you seem a little off. He wasn’t as funny as he usually is.”

“Well,” says Tyler, “It’s not his job to be funny.” He regrets saying it as soon as he says it.

Jenna looks hurt, and Tyler is feeling a mix of guilty and like he wishes he were back home in bed.

“I know that, Tyler, you guys just seemed like you weren’t talking as much.”

“We’re fine, nothing is wrong, Jenna, I promise.”

She scowls. “Josh said the same thing.”

Oh, she talked to Josh.

“I called him before I came to get you,” she adds.

Tyler doesn’t say anything for a second. “We're not fighting.” He feels his cheeks flush. They're not.

Jenna lifts her nails up to her mouth in the way she does when she’s getting stressed about a subject.

He doesn’t want to say anything else about the topic, but he also doesn’t want to ever have to answer a question about it again. He can talk about how they had a misunderstanding. They did. They both made a few minor mistakes, and it’s not going to happen again, because both of them are better than that.

He readies himself to tell Jenna some version of this, but Jenna has sat back in her chair. “It’s okay, Tyler. I believe you. You don’t have to tell me what it was.”

Tyler knew she was nicer than Josh.

He sends the text after lunch. He wonders, as he presses send, if he should be putting so much thought into how long after fights he should wait before texting. And about that fact that it’s happened frequently enough it’s become a natural thing to wonder about before texting him. Jenna would know that, it seems like the kind of thing she would have good advice on.

Suddenly, Tyler wishes it was a year or so ago, when they were on tour, and the only thing he was concerned about was if Michael would find out about whatever piece of the bus Josh had accidentally crushed and make one of them pay for it.

Josh responds 28 minutes later with:

_you wouldn’t. no one could ever be as good as me._

_not even jenna, although she might come close_.

Tyler types:

_I might. You’re getting older, I’ve been thinking about newer models._

He waits, before adding:

_Can I come over tomorrow? I have some song ideas._

Right before he presses send, he changes the “Can I come” to “I am coming” and then tosses his phone in the back seat so he can drive.

He doesn’t actually have any songs. Well, he does, but they’re not good ones and not one he wants Josh to read, in any case. He does have to get his stuff from Josh’s house, though, if Josh still wants him to Not Stay Over So Much.

Capital N, capital M.

Some of the stuff he’s never showed Josh might work out, he thinks.

He has some verses from his first album—which still stands as mostly unreleased—that he could put into some better, new things.

They’re buried somewhere in folders or behind his dressers. As he pulls papers from under his bed and from in the corners of the closet, he wonders even if they do record it, even if they’re able to agree on a beat, if they can perform it.

Every few months, Tyler will sit down and have a minor crisis over his lyrics and wonder if he should maybe just grow up and start writing about fake stuff that hasn’t happened to him and his fake tragic love life.

He didn’t like performing half of his own music when he started, and now, even if he’s hardened to it, interview questions can still make him twitch.

He hasn’t yet, but who knows. Next month might spawn the melodramatic love song their non-existent record deal is begging them to write.

Tyler’s really old stuff, they both know, still isn’t performed for two main reasons.

First of all, it’s not very good. Tyler hadn’t had a legitimate vocal lesson in his entire life until his early twenties. Second, not only does he manage to sound off-key on his own music, the lyrics are too heavily religious to be relatable. Got to keep the customer satisfied, like what Simon & Garfunkel said.

Music at this level is an industry, not an art.

Of course, when he started out, he wasn’t planning to make a living off of it, but now that he is, well. If people can’t identify with it, they’re not going to buy it. Similarly, some of it was (in Josh’s words) “too fucking depressing, Tyler.”

An entire album made up of only one feeling isn’t going to get him anywhere. Show some emotional range. He’s pretty sure Michael told him that a few years ago, along with his multitudes of other advice.

What else was he supposed to write about, though? Jenna is the first real romantic relationship he’s had in years. The high school girlfriend he had for a week doesn’t count. (He was being distant.)

He has had, for most of his music career, the following life constants: Self-loathing and God. Josh fits in on the end somewhere there.

The new album has to have mass appeal. For now, though, he can work with what he’s got.

+

When Tyler opens Josh’s door, Josh gives him a quick smile that tells Tyler that he's probably still sort of upset at being accused. Tyler thinks _rightly_, for a quick second, and then forcefully stops caring. Meanwhile, Josh’s half-smile is telling Tyler they won’t get any rhythms down today.

Nothing they produce while upset turns out well, Tyler’s learned.

Tyler sets down the papers on Josh’s counter and tries to make it look like they haven’t been in the same position for months or years. “Josh,” says Tyler, at the exact same time Josh hums “Tyler”.

Tyler huffs out a laugh, and Josh says, “You first.”

Usually, when he’s apologizing, he kind of plans it out. He does that with Jenna, and his parents, and venue managers, and when he or Josh break something on tour and don’t want to be asked to pay for it.

He did not come here planning to apologize, but here is Josh, possibly one-third of the constants in his life, and his presence is feeling more variable with the weeks. Practically, too, they can’t work like this.

“I’m sorry,” he says, like he means it. “I didn’t mean to accuse you of… taking advantage of our friendship. You didn’t. I want to make sure that both of us are okay with that, and then leaving it there.” At this point, he’s not even sure if bringing it up is a good idea. He could always have taken the route of pretending it didn’t happen again.

Josh looks like he’s actually smiling now, even if it’s kind of mean. Tyler: 1. Disastrous Ending To Conversation: 0.

“Did you hear that on a talk show? Do you have any more lines from self-help books to repeat to me before I go?”

Tyler glares, and feels his face turn pink. Josh looks like he’s going to laugh.

“No.”

“Good to hear, Tyler, now that you’ve got that off your chest. Thank you. It’s fine. You freaked out, whatever. It won’t happen again, obviously.”

A lot of Tyler would like to argue that he did not freak out, but he doesn’t think that would go over well.

Josh continues, “You should know that you’re mostly being forgiven because I know you wanted to come over and you don’t even have any music. Yes, I see you brought some, and yes, I know you wrote that before you learned there were more than two subjects for song lyrics.”

Tyler nods seriously, folding his hands up underneath his chin. He gestures vaguely to the paper on the counter. “This one’s about how I wanted to jump out of my apartment window two years ago, and this one’s about how I saw my dad run over our neighbor’s cat and never told her.”

Josh says, “Both classic and marketable. How you manage, I’ll never know,” and leaves Tyler standing in the kitchen.

Tyler pushes his hands in his back pocket and taps his foot on the tile. Calling from inside his room, Josh yells, “I can hear you staring at the floor from inside my room, Tyler, give me a second; I’m coming back out!”

“Yeah, I know,” says Tyler, mostly to the kitchen tile.

“I was getting a sweatshirt,” Josh provides offhandedly as he starts looking through the kitchen for something.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m making food. You came over at an ungodly hour in the morning, I haven’t eaten or showered, and you’re just—” Josh changes his tone midway through speaking, and Tyler’s fairly certain Josh started off playful and then remembered to be annoyed near the end—“standing there waiting for me to tell you I’ll keep speaking to you.”

Tyler opens his mouth and shuts it again.

“Will you?”

“God, Tyler, fuck off, of course I will, it’s not even a big deal and you’re making it into one. We kissed, it was a mistake, I jerked you off, that was also a mistake. Mistakes happen. You’re making it worse.”

Tyler, who’s still not making eye contact, desperately wishes Josh had just stopped at telling Tyler to fuck off. “Okay,” he says weakly, looking up. Josh is looking right at him.

Josh looks like he’s not about to say anything, so Tyler checks his watch. “It’s not an ungodly hour of the morning. It’s 8 am.”

When Josh says, “I could have been asleep,” he looks tired.

“But you weren’t.”

“But I wasn’t.”

There’s a pause where Josh pours water into a container of instant oatmeal and Tyler folds the corner of a lyric sheet on the counter, obsessively trying to come up with something to say.

“Some of these might actually work, I think. We can combine stuff. Now that… now that I’ve got another person who knows what they’re doing, some of it can sound better.”

“Your music?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright,” says Josh, and he crosses the room while his food is microwaving to stand next to Tyler.

+

Reorganizing songs is slow going.

They don’t deal much with the music Tyler brought over, but they get through planning some of the concepts for the album.

Getting an album together takes far longer than the general public expects. Everything has to be written, the concept has to be approved by the label, and eons have to be spent in a recording studio—usually one that's not close to home—before a track list can be finalized and publicity (usually for a tour) can begin.

People will sometimes ask them in interviews if they feel like the workload isn’t divided, or if Josh gets too much credit. The second one, people usually just ask when they’re alone with Tyler, although Josh’s presence hasn’t stopped them all.

It actually feels even, in the midst of it. Tyler can sing well enough and he can definitely write. Josh can create music to go along with it, and he can overlay things Tyler has written even once they’re already complete, making it sound like the chords and the lyrics were planned together.

Writing lyrics before writing music isn’t recommended by anyone.

They don’t even do it as much anymore, because it _is _faster to create a sound if you’re planning the words along with it—it just feels limited to Tyler. He’d say that in an interview, that he can’t be “bound by a beat” or something equally ridiculous, but he doesn’t want to be quoted on something like that for the rest of his life.

Anyways, it’s less true now. This album is a new technique. Inarguably, it’s better.

+

Tyler will use any excuse necessary to spend less time in his apartment, but he doesn’t even need one for this.

They can’t do anything louder than watch TV at half-volume before Tyler’s elderly neighbor begins to bang on the wall. The first time they attempted it, she threatened to call the police. Josh was saying, “Tyler. Tyler, she shouldn’t even be able to hear at all. She’s like 80. How thin are these walls?” And then Josh had walked over the wall and banged back.

That was a few years ago.

So they practice in Josh’s basement. Probably, they could rent out a studio to work in, but at this point, it’s almost a tradition.

So is sleeping on the pullout couch, which Tyler had found for free on the side of the road last year, and decided Josh could add to his collection of pullout couches that Tyler wanted to sleep on.

They have a fridge down there and everything.

Usually, this is how it goes:

One. After an intermediary period of Tyler spending a carefully limited amount of time in Josh’s house, Tyler will graduate to spending several days sleeping on both the upstairs and downstairs pullout couches while they run through a creative spell.

Two. When they start running out of ideas for a song, or Josh starts drumming angrily enough that his hands start bleeding, or they run out of frozen waffles, Tyler will go back to his apartment and pretend like he’s going to write there.

Three. Tyler will not write in his apartment while they’re in the midst of recording. He will sleep for two days, and then he will drive back to Josh’s with a fraction of an idea; but too late for them to work on it, and while Josh is sleeping, Tyler will write.

Four. Repeat.

+

Tyler’s apartment is really, really not conducive to writing. He likes to think it goes beyond just his inability to write in his own home while he’s using Josh’s as a fake one.

There aren’t enough windows and his fridge still has nothing but condiments in it, but Josh’s has those frozen waffles that you can microwave and put Nutella on.

For the first few weeks, Tyler goes over there on weekdays, usually ends up spending Friday night and leaves Saturday morning.

Predictably, this album is not that different from the rest in its creation narrative, except for one small thing. Tyler thinks it might be a little slower.

Josh is still being careful.

Even a few months into their tradition of a half-living arrangement, Josh delicately asks if Tyler wants to take left-over Chinese or Thai or Indian food back to his place, or if they want to try playing at Tyler’s for once.

Tyler doesn’t think Josh actually wants to do any of these things; instead, Josh is making a point by giving options. He’s not… certain about this, though. Josh’s motivations are always blurry until you realize exactly what it is he’s trying to get at, and by then, it's definitely too late to prevent anything. Although. There might not be anything to prevent.

The part of Tyler that will look for the worst in any situation is telling him Josh wants distance. Or, intriguingly, Josh wants Tyler to want distance. Tyler tells that part to shut up. (That’s never worked. It doesn’t even make sense.)

They are in the beginning stages after a few months or so. Which is to say, they are slowly finishing up the lyrics and the melodies and are ready to book studio time.

There aren’t any great recording studios in Ohio, so they’re actually going to have to leave to record in L.A at some point—this is what Josh is telling Tyler right now as he shuts his laptop.

“Oh.” says Tyler. He doesn’t want to go. He wants to stay here, in the pre-album state that feels unbound by time. On this couch, where he can see Josh’s kitchen if he turns his head.

Jenna called yesterday. Tyler hasn’t seen her in a week, which is probably the mark of a terrible boyfriend and most likely inexcusable when they live so close to each other, but he does talk to her over the phone and she’s so understanding. She gets, or at least tries to get, how much of Tyler goes into an album, and she never pries, and Tyler thinks she’s perfect because of this.

He’ll see her at church, though.

Tyler’s been sleeping on the pullout and it’s Saturday before 12 pm, so he’s still in pajama pants, half-covered in one of Josh’s fleece blankets.

Josh wakes him up, shaking and ugent. “Tyler, he says. I’ve got news. Highly important news.”

“What,” says Tyler. He’s talking with the side of his face pressed against the pillow. The sunlight is really bright.

“Get off the couch and greet the day! A record company called. They want to sign us. Apparently Michael sent them some of our stuff, and they liked it. They want to meet with us.”

“Are they legit? Is this real?” Tyler’s not entirely sure what’s going on. Maybe he’s still dreaming.

“Yes, it’s real. They’ve signed some other really popular bands. You know, they signed the guys we toured with.”

“Oh,” says Tyler. “Oh, them. Their company sounds like the noodle brand. Someone should tell them.”

“_You_ can be the one to tell them,” says Josh, excitedly drumming his hands on his laptop. “We’re going to meet with them next week. We should tell them about what we’ve got planned, and everything.”

“What, exactly, do we have planned?” Tyler can’t remember.

Josh gestures around at the papers all over the floor. “Some things, Tyler! We’ve got some things.”

“Oh, right,” says Tyler. “How could I forget?”

+

The record deal meeting goes by very quickly.

One of the agents, the one to the left of the CEO, is overly honest to the point of insult—Tyler doesn’t think his voice is _that_ annoying. There was no need to make farm animal comparisons.

He feels perpetually uncomfortable, even with Josh next to him.

The glass table is really dirty and Tyler can see fingerprints all over it. As the meeting progresses, Tyler begins to think that fingerprints all over it are from similarly nervous artists gripping the table as the head of the company tells them what they’re bad at.

Tyler has no plans of making his songs more relatable, which is the CEO’s main complaint about _Regional_. He figures if people want to listen to it, they’ll listen to it.

This is probably not what the CEO wants to hear, so Tyler keeps quiet and signs the papers they give him and can’t do anything about it when they make Josh sign a separate one.

He does try, though.

“You write and sing the songs, so you’re going to make more money. Even if you split up the income evenly—which we’re not going to, because it won’t make a difference in the end-- you’re still going to make more money than Mr. Dun because you’re the figurehead of this band.”

“It’s fine, Tyler,” Josh tells him, under his breath.

“Okay,” says Tyler.

The agent to the right of the CEO, who Tyler thinks may have introduced himself as Arthur, walks them out.

He’s explaining something boring about how they’re planning to advertise the two of them to certain age groups. Tyler doesn’t really have anything to say to this beyond “It was nice meeting you. Thank you for not cutting your hair like that other agent.”

Possibly-Arthur laughs warmly, and Josh, standing on the steps, agrees. “Someone needs to anonymously tell him to do something about it. I couldn’t look anywhere else. That meeting could have been about anything. All I know is that agent needed a haircut.”

Arthur smiles and waves them off. “I’ll keep it in mind. See you both later, and good luck with the album.”

“Do you think he’ll really do it?” asks Josh as they walk down the steps of the building out onto the street.

“I don’t know. I hope so, though.”

When they get home, Josh says, “We should talk about tour dates. Where do we want to go, cities we haven’t been to and whatnot.”

Tyler knows that Josh knows that he doesn’t want to go. They haven’t brought up the tour dates until now, and the tour won’t be very long at all because it’ll probably just be a summer or fall one—with the larger album one a few months after—but it's still several months of closely-packed hotel rooms and broken A/Cs.

They haven’t even recorded the album.

They’ve been on maybe four tours together, and this has happened every time so far.

They have months before they actually go on tour, and yet, when he thinks about it, he gets the desire to bury his head in one of the couch cushions and yell.

It's not stage fright. It’s a discomfort associated with baring your soul in front of a few hundred people, even if they don’t understand the lyrics.

Tyler can feel how obvious it is in his voice, and he feels oddly fake. He should be excited. If he pretends to be, though, it’ll just make it worse.

Josh doesn’t turn around, but there’s a silence hanging over them. Josh could either tell Tyler it’ll be fun, or he could ignore Tyler’s (probably predictable) discomfort and move on.

Tyler knows it will be the second. This is their routine by now, perfected by years of Tyler not wanting to do important and necessary things and Josh, not asking for an explanation, making him do those things but also with Josh.

“Do you think, Tyler, maybe you should work on getting out of bed before 12? Just to start good habits up so that when you become a real adult you’ll be prepared?” Tyler doubts Josh will bring up tour dates again until tomorrow.

Josh adds, “What was your proposed tour title? Seriously, though, nothing emo. If it has the word ‘emotion’ in it or something, I’m leaving the band. You can’t be a one-person band.”

“We don’t even have the album title yet.”

“I thought we were going to call it Vessel.”

Oh. Yeah, they could. It’s written on the folder Tyler keeps old song lyrics in, scrawled in fading permanent marker. It wasn’t exactly in the album title; it was a title for a lot of things.

Josh waits for Tyler to respond, and when he doesn't, Josh says: “We both know what the album title is going to sound like. Or already does sound like. I won’t stand for a similar tour title. Can’t we make it funny? People title tours things like… puns. If they can do that, we could be. Twenty One Pilots: Piloting a Vessel.”

“I’m kicking you out of the band myself if you ever say anything to me like that again.” Tyler’s kidding and he says it with a deadpan voice, but Josh looks like he wants to have a discussion.

Inhaling deeply, Josh places his fingers in a praying position under his chin. “I think you need to start taking our band less seriously.”

“It’s our job.” None of these conversations ever go in the direction he wants them to.

“Yes, but Tyler, do you understand—this recording company, it’s official. They're going to give us concepts and things and they’re going to shoot down your ideas and you’re not going to be able to do certain things.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do. Write something happy.”

“When did you become my manager?”

Josh says, “I’ll write it with you.”

“We already write music together.”

“Yes, but. More collaborative than _Regional_. I mean, _Regional_ was, but maybe this time we can do lyrics together. Or just song ideas.”

“I—” says Tyler. He’s always been bad at group projects, but Josh is always the exception. The back of Tyler’s brain also tells him this will delete the obligatory weekends he has to go back to his apartment and pretend like he can write better when he’s alone. “Yeah, that might be better.”

Josh gives him a half-smile. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

At this point, Josh’s roommate, who still manages to pay his half of the rent, is essentially a cryptid. Tyler’s never met him.

They would probably practice as loudly as they wanted even if he _was_ in the house, but without him there, they don’t have a set time where they put the drum kit back in the corner and Josh goes upstairs to make some kind of late-night snack before falling asleep on the loveseat across from the couch.

When they were writing new things for _Regional_, Josh had had a different roommate who wasn’t a ghost, and there was an established “Silence” time which was strictly enforced.

Now, when they finally start getting into it, they're going to bed at 4 in the morning with dry eyes and subsisting on Chinese takeout. Tyler hasn’t left the house in a week. This is the happiest he’s been in months.

He loves watching Josh play. Tyler can play the piano, and the ukulele, and some other softer string instruments, but mostly he can sing. Josh can _play_.

“No one would come see us if it wasn’t for you,” he says to Josh, sitting cross-legged on the piano bench when Josh finishes going over the notes on one of the songs.

“You’re right. We should start giving free shows, actually, to make up for your presence.”

“We wouldn’t make any more money than we do now,” says Tyler, and Josh laughs. Touring costs so much it pays for itself and nothing else.

+

Josh’s house is most soothing at night. In the fall, Josh leaves the windows open, and the bugs aren’t all dead yet, so they make chirruping choruses when it’s dark and the birds still greet him in the morning.

It’s cold enough that Tyler can sleep on the pullout with two blankets, though, and when he wakes up, it’s to sun shining in stripes across the carpet.

They finish practicing in the night, but not so late anymore as they did the week before, and they have time—or time that they create—to watch a movie afterwards.

Because of Tyler’s limited (and bad, according to Josh) taste in movies, Josh picks most of them. The last album, they did this with TV shows.

Spending time with Josh mostly reminds Tyler how he has no friends except for Josh, and Josh definitely has friends besides him.

Tyler has old friends from high school basketball, but most of them live in far-away suburbs and never left the immediate area. Besides, Tyler hasn’t talked to any of them in a while.

His mother calls every week. She misses him, and Tyler misses her in the same way he misses his house and he misses being 7 years old and her calling him in for a lesson while he was outside playing with his brother. Nostalgia.

He’s not active in church, either, and Josh doesn’t go often anymore and Tyler keeps accidentally sleeping through it.

He hasn't been since he moved in with Josh. (And this is what is different from all the times before it: Tyler would go to church with Josh, without Josh, on tour, in new states and towns).

Faux-living at Josh’s house for a month or so relaxes him, although Tyler knows intellectually direct contact with only one person for that long should stress him out. He doesn’t want to leave quite yet.

Josh, he’ll go out with friends sometimes—he has them from old bands he’s played in, the one right before this one. He has lots of drummer friends.

Drummers, Tyler’s learned, tend to get along well with each other. Privately, Tyler thinks this inherent bond has something to do with the shared desire to hit things and make a lot of noise.

Because Josh doesn’t usually bring them home with him, Tyler hasn’t met most of Josh’s friends unless they’ve been in direct contact with the band. He only hears stories about them. He has an ongoing list of people Josh talks about who could easily be made up and Tyler would never know.

Tyler manages to stay at Josh’s for another two weeks before Jenna asks Tyler why he hasn’t left yet over the phone. Those exact words don’t come out of her mouth, but Tyler can parse the underlying message.

He sort of knows the direction the conversation they’re about to have could go, and he’s going to try to make it as light as possible. He says, “How do you know I haven’t left yet? I could have gone back to my apartment.” Tyler is hopeful that Jenna knows he’s joking about this. He can’t remember if he’s ever told her about how much he doesn’t like his apartment or not.

“I asked Josh.”

(Based on her tone, this conversation will be 60 percent less light than Tyler intended.)

“Do you and Josh always talk about me?” He’s going to have to try harder; he doesn’t want her upset. He feels like it’s a good thing she hasn’t cried yet when they’ve been dating for so long, although he’s not sure if this is a milestone to be proud of or not.

Tyler also thinks Josh told him last week that he was going out for lunch with Jenna and friends, but Tyler wasn’t exactly paying attention. They probably talked about him there.

“Josh has called me more in the past two weeks than you have.”

Which, okay, that’s probably fair. “I’ve been busy, Jenna, you know how it is.” He sounds petulant to his own ears.

“Too busy to go to church?” Her voice has sharpened. “I haven’t seen you there. I know Josh doesn’t go as much anymore, but you… we used to go together.”

Tyler says, “When was that, any--” and then he cuts himself off, because he doesn’t want to get into a fight over the phone. So he says, “I keep sleeping through it.”

“_Tyler._ I miss you. We’re dating. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

And so she’s forgiven him. Or she will. She’s forgiven him, and he loves her. “No, Jenna, I’m sorry. I’ll work on it, I’ll plan something for us to do. It’s—what day is it?”

“Saturday.”

“—We can do something this evening, or Sunday. Whichever works best for you.” Josh walked into the kitchen a minute earlier, and now he’s taking a suspiciously long time to stir powdered creamer into his coffee. He can hear; he probably knows already.

Josh looks up to see Tyler looking at him, mouths “Jenna,” and points at the phone. Tyler nods.

Jenna is telling him that next Saturday works best, because there’s a new museum exhibit she wants to see, and she will see him at church that Sunday.

As he hangs up the phone, Tyler starts to think about what type of flower he should bring to make it up to her.

Josh is silent.

Tyler says, “Jenna and I are going to a museum next Saturday. There’s a showing on a mummy or something, and she wants to see it.”

“I think you should bring her flowers.”

“I—I was going to, but why do you think that.”

“Well, Tyler, you’ve been sort of awful.” Josh says this matter-of-factly, continuing to stare at the coffee.

Josh politely gives Tyler about six seconds to defend himself, which Tyler does not use, before continuing. “You’re a terrible boyfriend. You’ve essentially moved in with me. You haven’t called her in weeks, you won’t go to church with her anymore, and it’s an absolute miracle and a real testament to the goodness of her heart that she hasn’t broken up with you yet. You’re lucky you found a girl who understands you, Tyler.”

Tyler wants to say, _what's that supposed to mean. _Instead, he stands there frozen while Josh takes the mug and goes to sit on the loveseat.

He sits on a kitchen stool for half an hour doodling on his folder before he stands up and walks to the living room. “I’m not a terrible boyfriend. I’m, I could be better, I know that, but when did you become my relationship counselor? Jenna knows how tired I get after writing lyrics, and—and—you could ask me to leave, I don’t have to stay with you.”

“The fact that you didn’t defend yourself right away was a response enough,” retorts Josh. “I wasn’t asking you to move out. I know you’re tired, Jesus, everyone knows you’re tired. You give off such an attractive air of misery.”

When Tyler asks, “Why are you being so mean?” his voice breaks on the last syllable. He feels itchy in his skin; he can never feel his way around fights with Josh anymore. He doesn’t understand what Josh is saying. He gets he’s being a bad boyfriend, that he’s living off of Josh’s crushed couch cushions, that he hasn’t talked to anyone but Josh and his mom every now and then in ages.

He feels like everything escalates between them so quickly. They weren’t fighting 15 minutes ago. Fifteen minutes ago, Josh was talking about a new drum pattern and they were eating breakfast sitting on the stairs, Tyler trying to throw little pieces of granola into Josh’s mouth whenever he would open it to say a new word.

All of their fights are like this now.

“You’ve never been in a real relationship. People don’t act like you act; you can’t just not talk to your girlfriend for weeks because you don’t feel like it. I don’t understand her. I mean, I do, but I don’t know why she’s as nice as she is. I would break up with you.”

“You’re not my girlfriend.”

“No, thank god. You have commitment issues.”

“I’ve been living with you for months,” Tyler points out.

“I’m not the one you’re supposed to be committed to, you idiot.”

“I am.” He is.

“Tyler, shut up, no one talks like that.” Josh rubs his palm hard over his eyes.

“I am,” Tyler says again, and at this, Josh stands up and walks the ten steps it takes him to get within a foot of Tyler.

Josh’s cheeks are flushed and his eyes are shining. He looks angrier than he should be, frustrated at something Tyler doesn’t quite get.

Josh is so far in his space now that Tyler can feel his body heat when he says, “I’m not telling you to do anything. I’m asking you, as a friend, to take a look a the way you prioritize your relationships, and maybe the fact that you’ve never had a real romantic relationship in your life besides this one—you and Jenna—should tell you something.”

It’s a whisper when Tyler says, “Tell me what?”

“I don’t know, Tyler. Maybe you’re not ready for a relationship, when you can’t even leave the house. It’s not fair to her. It’s not fair to me, you can’t keep hanging over me like this, you’ve got to have other friends. You’ve got to make them. I don’t—I’m not trying to push you away.”

Tyler interrupts, panicky, with, “Are you kicking me out?”

“No, of course not.” Josh laughs when he says, “Where would you go, right?”

He stares at Tyler, more seriously. He looks calmer, like maybe he feels bad for lashing out. Tyler vaguely wishes Josh would have emotions that lasted more than 15 seconds.

“I’m just saying maybe we should take a step back,” Josh is saying. “You can’t—I can't—we can’t live like this. The band won’t last; it’s bad for you. God, Tyler, I’m fucking worried about you. You need to get out more. I feel like it’s my fault, somehow, the way you’ve been.”

“I’m fine.” He is, he’s better than fine, this is the happiest he’s been in months.

“You’re depressed.”

Tyler twitches. So that’s what this is about. Josh is worried, and went about his concern by telling Tyler he was being a terrible boyfriend. That’s… not so surprising. “Not more so than usual. This is just the most time we’ve spent together in a while, sorry to disappoint. This isn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, I know, but I can try to help.”

He wants to say _I don’t think you do know_, because Josh looks like he’s busy blaming himself for Tyler not wanting to go outdoors. “Josh,” Tyler says, and Josh’s eyes fall shut and open in a slow blink. “Nothing is new. I’m staying with you because I want to stay with you, not because I can’t bring myself to do anything else.” Most of what he’s saying is true.

“Okay,” says Josh, softly.

Swiftly, Tyler is reminded of Josh tying his tie in a motel room over a year ago on tour before they went to church. Tyler can’t remember anything about the church, or anything else about that city, besides than one moment.

“You know,” says Josh, abruptly, “The correct response to learning that I was spending more time with your girlfriend than you were was ‘Josh, are you sleeping with my girlfriend?’”

“Um,” says Tyler. Josh is really close, and Tyler is having trouble concentrating. “Are you sleeping with my girlfriend?”

Josh smiles, full. “No.”

When Josh asks, “Are you?” in an early-morning voice like he’s rhetorically asking Tyler where he put the milk, it takes Tyler a moment to process because he’s staring at the way Josh tightens his mouth when he says it.

He takes a step back when he registers it, mostly out of surprise. “What? Why would you ask me that?”

“Sorry, sorry, I was curious, you didn’t have to respond.”

“We aren’t. We're waiting.”

Moving forward so his nose is inches away from Tyler’s, Josh says, “I didn’t think so. And no reason. It’s just something to think about.” He is so, so close.

“For me or for you?”

Josh is smiling again. “You, obviously.” Then he says, “You mean you’re both waiting until marriage? You’re not a virgin. I have no idea if she is or not, though.”

“We talked about it. We both want to do this relationship right, and it was her idea. Pasts don’t matter, and all that.”

Josh tilts his head slightly to the left, like he’s thinking about it, and Tyler realizes that Josh is close enough to kiss. It’s a small thought at the base of his brain that he’s not going to act on, but he doesn’t know what to do with it. That he could lean in right now and kiss Josh. They’ve done it before.

Josh says, “Right. I keep managing to forget you guys met in church, and all that.”

“And all that,” echoes Tyler. He is going to take another step back. He doesn’t want to kiss Josh for a lot of reasons, not limited to but including that fact that Tyler goes to church and has morals, and also doesn’t want this to end up like it did the last time with their friendship cracked around the edges permanently, but Josh is so close and he’s murmuring “Tyler” to get his attention. His breath smells like instant coffee and shaving cream.

Tyler says, “What,” shuts his eyes, and fits his mouth over Josh’s.

Josh makes a noise of surprise under him and freezes. He pulls back slightly, but doesn’t move away. His eyes are wide, his mouth still half-open in surprise. “Tyler, what are you doing?” His voice is low and shocked.

He’s got no idea what he’s doing, Josh should know that by now. The thought moves sluggishly through his head. Josh’s lower lip is wet. “I’m not sure,” Tyler says.

Josh nods like this is a sensible thing to say. Tyler leans in again, his mouth right on top of Josh’s, and Josh inhales, his eyes fluttering shut.

He says nothing, though, when Tyler mouths Josh’s lower lip, feeling Josh shudder from where Tyler has moved one of his hands to his jaw, from where they’re crowded up against each other, then kisses him.

Josh kisses back. They stand there like that for a second, noses crisscrossing, breathing wetly into each other’s mouths but not really doing much about it.

Tyler burns where he makes contact with Josh’s chest and thighs. The air’s close and pressing around them.

Josh gasps into Tyler’s mouth and fits his hands onto Tyler’s hip bones before he pushes him backwards until Tyler’s spine is pressing into the wall.

The noises their mouths make are obscene in the quiet house, wet and filthy. When Josh sucks on Tyler’s tongue, Tyler feels white-hot and freezing in the space of a second, like his body can’t quite process it. He groans low into Josh’s mouth, letting his fingers push up into Josh’s hair. “You can, you can—” Josh stumbles over the words because he’s kissing Tyler’s cheeks and jawline, lips on Tyler’s throat so Tyler tilts his head back and it hits the wall.

As Josh keeps his mouth on Tyler’s throat, his neck bent down, Tyler lowers his chin until it bumps into Josh’s forehead. “Sorry, sorry,” says Tyler, sloppily, and pulls Josh up by his hair, hard.

Josh moans. Tyler thinks, _I know. This is like last time. This is like that first time. _He thinks, _we should stop_.

Josh kisses him again, hot, moving his hands up Tyler’s waist so their hip bones can press together. Tyler can feel Josh against his leg. “Tyler, you’re so hard, fuck, I can—” Tyler nods in response so he doesn’t have to speak; he knows what his voice will sound like. He wants to roll his hips against Josh’s so they grind against each other, he wants Josh to hold him in place against the wall while he bites his way down Tyler’s chest, he wants to come with Josh’s hands on him, wants to see Josh bite his lip so it bleeds.

It’s overwhelming; Josh’s hands under his ribcage and the way Josh smells this close to him, it’s so _hot_, Tyler’s breaking away from the kiss, trailing his nose down Josh’s cheek so he can pant into the crook of Josh’s neck, and then he’s curling his hands behind the back of Josh’s head again.

“Yeah, yeah, I know, fuck, I know, Tyler, look at me,” Josh is saying, tilting Tyler’s head up so Tyler can see Josh’s reddened mouth and dark eyes. Nothing makes sense—this won’t make sense when it’s over, Tyler can feel the undercurrents of fear and shame beneath his skin already, but Tyler can’t think at all right now and he wants to kiss the circles under Josh’s eyes, his cheekbones, his mouth again, and Josh will let him.

Josh leans in again opened-mouthed and kisses Tyler roughly against the wall, moaning into Tyler’s mouth in a way that has him pushing his hips up and forward so one of Josh’s legs fits in-between his own.

Tyler reaches for Josh’s jeans, pulling him in. They can’t get any closer now, desire feels heavy in Tyler’s blood, god, he can’t think of anything he wants as much as this.

Josh is out of breath, and he pulls away to say something like, “No, maybe we shouldn’t do this, I think this is a bad idea, could you,” but he breaks off roughly, because Tyler’s cupping him through his jeans.

“Ah,” Josh says, breath shortened, and he traces Tyler’s hand around the wrist lightly where Tyler’s still touching him. Josh’s eyes are glazed over, his head bent down slightly to look at where their legs are crossing and where Tyler’s hand is, fuck, he can feel Josh under his palm like this. “I can,” says Tyler, and his voice sounds low and scratchy, and then forgets what he’s about to say, because Josh has removed his hand from Tyler’s and is pushing Tyler’s palm off him, reaching between them to pull at the waistband of Tyler’s sweatpants.

Josh still has one of Tyler’s wrists in his left hand when he reaches down and pulls Tyler’s cock out, licking his palm before wrapping his hand around it and stroking up, thumbing the head and making Tyler’s eyes roll back in his head, his mouth fall open.

“I’ve wanted to for—Tyler, Tyler, you don’t even know, I have to,” Josh is saying, jerking Tyler off slow and steady and speaking directly into Tyler’s ear.

Tyler is twisting his neck so his right cheek touches the wall. It’s not exactly dirty talk, because Josh’s words seem out of order and jumbled, but Josh’s voice hoarse in his ear makes Tyler’s gut heat up. Josh’s hands are calloused and his lips are warm on Tyler’s neck.

Tyler wants to see Josh like this; he’s suddenly never been touched in his life. He wants them to meld together in an instant, see Josh’s bones and muscle under his skin. Dragging his wrist from Josh’s hold, Tyler unbuttons Josh’s jeans while Josh stills and watches. Josh’s skin is soft under Tyler’s hands, hard and leaking, and Tyler realizes abruptly he’s not sure what to do because he’s never been in this position before.

He wants to hear Josh whine again, so he guesses, thumbing Josh’s slit before licking his palm like Josh did before and dragging it down. Josh swallows and his eyelashes flutter, his mouth is so red because of Tyler, because they kissed and Tyler’s tongue was in his mouth, fuck.

Josh seems to shake out of it for a second, moving so he has his hand wrapped around both their cocks and stroking up. It’s not enough, so Tyler moves to put his hand on top of Josh’s, and his knuckles bump into Josh’s chest awkwardly.

The room is silent except for their harsh breathing.

When they pull up again, hands brushing thoughtless, Josh far more on-rhythm than Tyler, Tyler can feel his stomach muscles contract, white-hot heat building at the base of his spine. “I’m going to,” says Tyler, and Josh says “Wait,” before pulling his hand off Tyler entirely and moving away, causing Tyler to cant his hips up involuntarily into his own hand looking for friction. Josh’s eyes are lidded, color high on his cheeks, and he pauses for a second to watch Tyler before he pushes Tyler’s hand off and sinks to his knees.

Josh is asking permission, and Tyler is nodding erratically, surprised, still close, because he can feel Josh’s breath on him now. Josh ducks his head and licks the underside of Tyler’s cock before curling his mouth around the tip. Josh wraps his hand around the bottom half that he can’t get his mouth around.

Tyler feels like he’s falling apart. He's gotten a blowjob once before this, from some girl he barely knew, ages ago, and that was good then, but this is something entirely new, because it’s Josh that has his mouth on him, hot and wet, and Tyler’s biting his fist not to moan. He’s not even doing a good job, panting with his teeth locked around his knuckles, groaning deep in his chest when Josh lets the edge of his teeth scrape lightly on the edge of Tyler’s cock.

He’s going to come like this; he could come in Josh’s mouth, he’s trying so hard to be polite and not thrust up hard enough to choke him.

Josh is holding Tyler’s hips against the wall because Tyler can’t stay still. Josh pulls off long enough to say, “You can, it’s fine, you can pull,” and places one of Tyler’s hands in his hair where Tyler can curl his fingers around it. “Josh, please, I’m,” Tyler says, sudden, and he can feel it, seconds away from it when he looks at Josh.

He tugs on Josh’s hair, and Josh hums around him so his throat vibrates and pulls one of his hands away from Tyler’s hip bones, curling it around his own cock. Tyler comes hard, squeezing his eyes shut hard enough that white sparks flick up in the corner of his vision, gasping out some mangled version of Josh’s name around his fist and feeling the inside of Josh’s mouth.

Josh lets Tyler slip out of his mouth, and Tyler watches Josh’s throat moves as he swallows, coughing slightly and wiping his mouth. Dazed, Tyler falls back against the wall.

Josh stands up. He’s still hard.

Tyler says, breathless, high off of dopamine confidence, “Come here,” and Josh moves closer, eyes searching. He kisses Josh, and Josh kisses back, desperate and shuddering. Tyler pushes his hand between them and jerks Josh off until Josh is making short, cut-off noises into Tyler’s mouth and coming over Tyler’s hand and his shirt.

They stand there for a minute, both of them breathing heavily, Josh’s pupils still blown. Tyler takes his hands off Josh, unsure what to do with them, eventually wiping them off on Josh’s shirt before curling them into fists at his side.

Neither of them is making eye contact. Josh’s eyes flick up once, and Tyler feels torn open and over-sensitized when they lock gazes, so he flicks his vision to the counter behind Josh.

“I don’t think we should have done that,” says Tyler, after he’s pulled his sweatpants back up to his hips and Josh has shakily buttoned his jeans. He thinks, for a second, that Josh might hit him. Maybe he deserves it.

Tyler’s hands are pressed deep into the soft pockets of his pants because they won’t stop trembling.

“Probably not,” says Josh, after a moment. “It’s a bit too late for that now.”

“I have a girlfriend,” mumbles Tyler. “I’m also not gay.”

Josh looks slightly incredulous. “Are you warning me off you? Why do you always act like this is exclusively my fault?”

Tyler thinks that he should approach this from a different angle. He swallows. “We should never do this again.”

“I whole-heartedly agree,” says Josh. There’s a spot on Josh’s neck from where Tyler was kissing him.

This is the singular most awkward conversation of Tyler’s life.

Josh is still breathing faster than usual and Tyler still can’t look him in the eye. He remembers what it felt like, minutes ago, to have Josh’s mouth on him. They can never do this again.

“Are we going to pretend this never happened?” Josh asks.

“Yes,” says Tyler, plainly.

“Are you-- we going to do a good job of it?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” says Josh, and takes a step back. “I’m going to go shower.”

Tyler nods. He sits down on the couch and turns the volume up until he doesn’t have to hear the water running. It’s still Saturday, and he promised Jenna he would go to church with her tomorrow.

Maybe he should go grocery shopping while Josh is still in the shower. He considers going back to his apartment, but in the long run, that would only make things worse. It would be implying that things were bad enough that Tyler had to go back, and then they couldn’t pretend like nothing had happened, which this time, they are both going to do a very good job of.

He doesn’t know why he did it. He didn’t want it, doesn’t want it, won’t want it, and yet. Chalk it up to stress, maybe. He was upset about Jenna. It wasn’t Josh’s place to give him relationship advice.

The shower runs and Tyler thinks about all the different things he could have said, or all the different ways he can prove to Josh that it’s not his fault, and says nothing when the shower turns off and Josh comes out of the shower dripping water all over the floor and asking why the TV’s so loud.

They start watching some terrible TV movie on the sci-fi channel once Josh gets dressed but Tyler passes out halfway through. When he wakes up, it’s the middle of the night, and Josh is gone.

+

He has to borrow Josh’s tie and blazer because most of what he has at Josh’s house clothing-wise is soft t-shirts and jeans. Josh just rolls his eyes and gives it to him when Tyler asks for it 10 minutes before he expects Jenna to arrive.

Jenna pulls up and rings the doorbell. She looks beautiful and like summer; She’s got a dress with flowers on it. After saying hello to Josh, she gives Tyler a look that lets him know she hasn’t entirely forgiven him for not calling. She warms up as they drive, though, telling him about her friends, and her friend’s friends who are having their first baby. Tyler sincerely hopes there isn’t a hidden message in this somehow.

“What have you and Josh been doing?”

“Not a lot,” Tyler murmurs. “Mostly trying to figure out when the best time to book recording studio dates are and finishing touches. He wants to record as early as December. I think we should do it in the spring.”

“What will you get done from December to spring?” She’s just making conversation.

“I don’t like some of the lyrics.”

“That makes sense, I guess. Anyways, Tyler, I know you haven’t been to church in awhile, so you probably don’t know this, but we’ve got a new pastor. He’s good.” She pauses. “Yeah, he’s good.”

Tyler says, “Oh, okay.”

The new pastor _is_ good, he speaks well and doesn’t ramble, but Tyler also has the worst luck in the entire world.

Pastor Johansson must double as a prophet, or God came to him in a dream and told Pastor Johansson that Tyler did something wrong, because the sermon is on the bond of marriage.

Tyler doesn’t think about marriage very often, but he knows that he should be. It’s a reminder. He’s in a committed, adult relationship. Which he’s never had in his life.

He feels like he’s getting older. He’s not even thirty, plenty of people wait to get married until they turn thirty, but his parents expect it of him. Ten years ago, he expected it of himself. Now, he’s… not so sure.

He will get married, though. Jenna’s going to be the right person, or she’s right enough for him and Tyler’s not going to look again. He doesn’t feel like he would be very good at it. Marriage. You either marry someone or you break up with them.

The pastor opens with something about the importance of friendship and love in a marriage, and seems to imply at some point that divorce is wrong—they’re not even Catholics, but okay—and then tries to connect it with his real life, as most pastors do now when they’re trying to relate to their audience and not just read from a very old book.

Tyler has not exactly doing the very specific wrong or right things that the pastor describes. He’s also not married, so it can only be so relatable.

He is not having an affair while married, and he is not having premarital sex. Not legitimate sex, he thinks, and then shuts his eyes and shakes off the thought.

So really, Tyler reasons, he hasn’t done much wrong. The speech doesn’t apply to him. Most of the stuff mentioned is about staying happy in a marriage, how the pastor is able to stay happy in his marriage.

Him and Jenna aren’t married.

Although.

They could be. She’s waiting, he knows.

If he’s being honest with himself, he wasn’t sure when he was going to ask. He just sort of knew that if he ever did ask, it would be her. He doesn’t want to find anyone else. This is half because Tyler likes Jenna, and half because he now knows, through real-life experience, that he is incredibly poor at keeping a relationship together.

Tyler has a mental list of other things that could happen between them.

  1. Jenna could get tired of him. He never answers the phone and he forgets other people exist.
  2. Jenna could be the one to ask. He doesn’t think she would. Part of his brain supplies, as he’s going over this, that if he goes with this step, he would wait indefinitely. Relationship limbo.
  3. They fall apart equally. Jenna grows up, and realizes she can do better. Tyler realizes he’s bad at having more than a few people he’s close to.
  4. He could propose to Jenna. They would be happy. Tyler loves her, and she loves him or at least thinks she does. That can be good enough. She gets along with his family and with Josh, and she likes their music, and she understands him.

They’re walking out of church now, and Tyler’s thinking about option number four. He waits next to a bench while Jenna talks with another woman she knows.

This isn’t about Josh. Not everything is about Josh. Tyler just wants a stable relationship in his life. He wants to be pressed to be committed and to do nothing but think about being committed to Jenna from now for forever, until everything else he’s thought will fade into background noise.

This is how it will work.

He’s going to propose to Jenna because he loves her. It’s not a precautionary measure, it’s because Tyler is ready for that kind of relationship. He needs that. He will tell Josh once he gets home, and Josh will probably be very surprised and then very unsurprised, which Tyler can't do anything about.

Jenna’s telling him she can drop him off or they can go to brunch, and he’s thinking about how he’s going to do it next weekend at the museum. She asks again. He nods, and then tries again and smiles, and they go to brunch.

He gets back home around 12:30. Josh isn’t in the living room, so he’s either asleep or with friends. Tyler takes out a piece of paper and starts writing.

It’s raining, and one of them has left the window open, so Tyler zones out a bit and jumps when the door pushes open and Josh walks in.

“What are you doing?” says Josh. He sounds bemused.

That would make sense, because it’s gotten dark in the time Tyler’s been sitting there, and he hasn’t bothered to turn the light on.

“Incredibly important things. In the dark, obviously. Dark important things.”

Josh laughs, short. “Obviously. Did you and Jenna have fun?”

“Yeah, it was nice. Church was good, we had a new speaker or something, and then we went to lunch. I’m seeing her again next weekend.” Tyler wonders if he should say, _I think I’m going to propose. _But if he said it right now, in the dark where he can’t really see Josh’s face and he’s pretty sure he’s been sitting here for six hours, it would sound a little like, _I think I’m going to propose. I don’t think it’s because of you, but it could be._

So he’ll probably wait a day.

Josh says, “I was playing around with some drummer friends. One of them has to go visit his family, and he was wondering if I could play in some local shows for him, so I said yes. It’s just a few, and the songs are easy. You can come see, if you like. There’s one next weekend.”

“Aren’t you already in a band?”

“The band I’m in isn’t so busy at the moment.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.”

+

Tyler tells him over dinner two days from then. Josh is trying to push a movie into the DVD player and Tyler is sitting on the floor trying to evenly divide the food from Chinese take out containers. When Josh looks the most distracted, and hopefully the least likely to concentrate on Tyler’s statement, Tyler says, “I think I’m going to propose.”

Josh drops the DVD. He jerks around. “You’re going to propose? Why?”

Tyler tries not to feel offended. “We’ve been dating for a while. I love her. What else am I going to do?”

“I’m not sure if that's the best way to approach a marriage. What even made you want to do this? Was it—” Josh cuts himself off. Tyler knows what he was going to say next, and doesn’t ask.

“She wants it, I think. I'm going to ask next weekend.”

Josh says, “I guess I’m not that surprised, now that I think about it. I don’t know. Sorry.” He laughs a bit hysterically. “I can’t believe you're going to be married. That’s wild.”

“Um,” says Tyler, “She has to say yes, first.”

“She’ll say yes.”

+

She does say yes.

Tyler proposes to her when they’re at her art museum, and he proposes in front of a painting in an empty room. No one is there to take a picture, but he knows they look beautiful.

He called his mother last week, and got his grandmother’s ring, and then he called Jenna’s parents like he was supposed to and asked for their permission. They gave him their blessing.

Jenna is surprised and Tyler trips getting down on one knee, and everything about it is a little uncoordinated.

He starts with, “Anyways, I was kind of wondering,” and then gets down on one knee mid sentence and watches Jenna’s eyes widen. He says something along the lines of “I was hoping you would marry me,” but he’s way more nervous than he expected he would be about it. His hands are shaking when he puts the ring on her finger.

Jenna smiles all through dinner and smiles through the car ride back to her house as Tyler goes to drop her off and through Tyler kissing her good-night on her front porch.

Tyler drives home and accidentally falls asleep on the couch next to Josh while Josh is trying to explain the plot of a book he wants to read. Josh is comfortable and their shoulders are pressed together, and when Tyler wakes up, Josh has put a blanket over him and is hunched on the other side of the couch, eyes shut and breathing slow.

The moment feels out of place. It feels simultaneously like every moment he’s ever had with Josh and like none of them. Josh is asleep, or he’s trying. His mouth is slightly open; Tyler can see the way the light glints slightly off his teeth. The blanket is soft over him. The two of them feel detached from time.

Tyler will wake up in the morning and he will think about weddings, but for now, nothing has existed but this.

He doesn’t want to go back to sleep. It feels like the first few weeks where he went over to Josh’s under the pretense of recording an album and woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t remember where he was, just that he wasn’t in his apartment.

Some nights, he would tap Josh awake, either by opening his bedroom door, or by tugging at the neck of his t-shirt when they had fallen asleep on the couch, or maybe kicking at his leg if they had been laying on the floor downstairs and Josh had shut his eyes.

Josh was always annoyed, but he would stay awake and listen to whatever Tyler had to say regardless, and sometimes go into the kitchen and make them soup while Tyler sat on a stool and hummed. He would watch dew collecting on the grass and the sun rise and Josh would manage to mess up canned tomato soup and then tell him it was because the instructions were confusing.

He considers similarly reaching across and touching Josh on the shoulder to shake him out of it. The two of them would drive to a restaurant in the middle of the night like they did on tour sometimes, and Josh would look at Tyler with dark circles under his eyes while Tyler said something exhausted and nonsensical about his feelings the way people do when it’s past 1 in the morning. He wants.

He’s not going to make Josh get up and drive somewhere with him, but he wants Josh awake and looking at him just for a minute.

“Josh,” he says.

Josh doesn’t move. He must actually be asleep.

Shifting from his position on the couch, Tyler puts his hand on Josh’s arm.

“Josh,” he says again, and Josh lifts his head and opens his shuts his eyes a few times before focusing on Tyler’s face.

“Yeah?” says Josh, roughly. Josh is all groggy and soft around the edges when he wakes up. He does this during tour, too. Here, at his house, both of them just wake up whenever, so Josh comes out of his room or pushes himself off the couch or the floor more awake, but right now, Josh is only looking at Tyler.

Tyler feels kind of selfish.

He says, leaning over Josh, “Will it change anything?”

Josh lets out a breath; he doesn’t even have to ask what Tyler’s talking about. “I’m supposed to be the one asking that question.”

“I’m asking it for both of us.”

Josh turns so their knees are touching. “I’m not sure. It should.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“You’re going to get married. It does.”

“But we’ll still be friends. We’ll still do this, stay up like this.”

“We both fell asleep. One of us always falls asleep, Tyler, what are you even talking about.”

“You know what I mean, Josh, please,” Tyler’s saying.

Josh is nodding slowly, maybe it’s because he agrees with Tyler, maybe it’s because he heard his name.

“I’ll try. We can try to keep it the same.” Josh sighs, and moves his hand slightly so it’s on Tyler’s shoulder.

He looks like he’s going to say something, but seems to change his mind halfway through opening his mouth.

Instead, he says, “You know, I still don’t understand why you’ve got these tattoos. I never pegged you as a tattoo person. I guess, though, if someone had said to me, ‘Tyler’s gotten a tattoo. It’s kind of fucking weird.’ I would probably visualize something like this, anyway.” Josh is touching the bands around Tyler’s arm lightly.

Tyler got them before he met Josh a few years after high school. He’s told Josh what they're about, kind of. Religion. Links, unbroken circles. Whatever’s connecting Tyler to the real moment whenever Josh brings them up again.

“What are they of right now?” says Josh.

“I’m not quite sure,” says Tyler, honestly.

“You’ve just gotten engaged. You only have one answer.”

“Then I guess it’s the right one.” Tyler briefly considers banning certain conversation topics so they can talk about things that don’t make Josh press harder and Tyler give in all the wrong ways.

“If you’re going to keep waking me up, I’m going to go to sleep in a real bed. This couch isn’t even that comfortable. You don’t have to sleep here, Tyler.”

“Here as in on this couch, or here as in your house?”

“Both, I guess.”

Tyler rolls his eyes. “It’s not so bad.”

Josh pushes himself off the couch, dragging the blanket with him from where it was covering them both and walking in the direction of his room. He realizes he’s dragging the blanket as he reaches the door handle, turns around, and tosses the blanket unceremoniously at Tyler. “Night,” he says.

+

They wake up the next morning and Tyler, who has slept for around 15 minutes and had a resulting quarter-life crisis, tells Josh over too-hot oatmeal that he wants to look for a house.

Josh feels softer to him than he did a few days ago, when.

“What?” says Josh. “You want to buy a house? _Why?_ Can’t you just move back to your apartment? Are you having a crisis or something?”

Tyler chooses not to answer. “I think when Jenna and I get married she’s going to want another place to live, and that’s definitely not in her house because she has roommates, and I hate my apartment and also have the money for a house, so I was thinking I should get one. Or just, start looking.”

“Okay,” says Josh slowly. “What exactly do you want me to do about this? I barely understand why you’re still here. We haven’t gotten more than a minute or two done on a song in weeks.”

This is unnecessarily mean, in Tyler’s opinion. Josh looks like he realizes it, too, and says, “Sorry. You know I don’t mind you staying here, sorry. I’m not kicking you out.”

Tyler stumbles a little when he says, “I just meant, we don’t have a lot to do today, so we could go look at houses.”

“I feel like we’re in a poorly written romance novel.” Josh is smirking. “Did you ask Jenna?”

“She doesn’t know I’m looking for a house. I’m going to surprise her.”

“You know how I implied this was a good idea about five seconds ago? I don’t think that anymore. I think this is a bad idea. You have a terrible, horrible, despicable taste in clothing, and I can only assume that also applies to exterior design. I’ve seen your apartment.”

“Your house doesn’t exactly look like the inside of a magazine. We ate popcorn out of that bowl five days ago.” Tyler gestures to the red bowl on the coffee table. Also, his clothes aren’t that bad, but whatever.

“Maybe not, but unlike your apartment, which is barren—excluding the plant you killed that my mother got you for your birthday last year—my house has character. Personality.”

“Okay, fine, well like I told you, you’re invited. I emailed an agent last night and she responded this morning. We’re meeting her in an hour.”

Josh looks impressed, and then he starts laughing. “What time did you email her?”

Tyler freezes. He didn’t actually think about that while sending the email. “Um,” he says. “Like 4 am or so.”

“Look at that, you’ve already managed to make an impression,” says Josh, who goes back to eating, then chokes and asks, “Did you tell her I exist?”

Tyler says, “Yeah. I told her I would bring a friend.”

The real estate agent, when she picks them up, assumes that they’re related.

This is somehow worse than anything else that she could assume, and neither of them realize it until they’ve looked at two houses, and she asks Tyler how long him and his brother have lived together.

Tyler begins to say, “My brother and I don’t live together,” and then realizes what she’s implying. Josh must have already realized, because he’s staring at the agent like he kind of wants to die.

Josh interrupts and says, “Do we really look alike?”

“Er,” she says, “Sort of? I’m so sorry. You guys just seem like you’ve known each other for a while.”

“We have,” says Tyler.

All the houses look the exact same. They’re all medium sized, and in suburban neighborhoods.

When Tyler tells the lady that he’s looking for a house for him and his wife, the agent nods and asks him if she’s going to look at the house before he buys it.

Tyler tells her no, and her face does that same mild-amusement mild-horror Josh’s got when Tyler explained what he wanted to do.

“We're not married yet,” Tyler adds. “But right now, I live in an apartment”—Josh cuts in with “Right now, he won’t leave my house”—“And so I’m looking for something to live in once we finally get married. So about a year or so from now.”

“Ahh,” says the agent, like she completely understands where Tyler is coming from, and yes, what he’s saying is very usual and relatable and she has had a lot of experience in her field. Tyler feels a bit suspicious.

On the way to the next one, Tyler mutters to Josh, “All of these look the same.”

Josh looks a little pained. He agrees, then. “I think the one we just saw was a little bigger than the first few.”

He turns to Josh quickly. “How long do you think you’ll live in the house you have now? Like, if either you or your roommate were to move out, which one of you would keep the house?”

“Me,” says Josh. “I like living there and can pay for it on my own.”

Now addressing the agent, who has pulled up in the driveway of the next house, Tyler says, “Which one was closest to the place where you picked us both up?”

She looks like she knows what he’s thinking. “Mr. Joseph, I’m not sure if picking a house based on the location of another is a great move. I’ve seen a few people do that, and then the person living in that house moves, and they wish they would have gotten the one they liked the most.”

Tyler doesn’t really care. “I like all of them,” he says.

“All right, then,” she says. “Do you want to go back to that one?”

Tyler nods.

The house closest to Josh’s house is in walking distance. It’s medium, white, and boring, but it’s got a nice front yard. The agent tells them it’s a great spot for a garden. Josh tells her he loves gardening, but he’s nowhere near as good as Tyler.

He proceeds to completely make up a story about how Tyler saved the Dun Family Reunion by creating a home-grown vegetable roast so fantastic none of Josh’s relatives fought over politics for the first time in twenty years. None of it is believable in the slightest.

The agent is either incredibly polite or is desperate for Tyler to buy a house, because she looks impressed and laughs in all the right places.

Even Josh looks surprised, and now it’s kind of awkward. Tyler strongly wishes Josh would learn to make fun of people in a way they would get without having to think about it. If this was an interview, he would play along, but he’ll just let Josh have his go for now.

“This looks great,” Tyler tells the agent, after a difficult moment where she asks Tyler what his favorite vegetable to grow is and Tyler tells her it’s apples without thinking. Josh is coughing into his sleeve trying not to laugh.

“Would you like to make a deposit?”

“Yeah,” says Tyler. He actually has no idea how to buy a house, but he hopes it’s similar to renting an apartment.

It’s not.

While the agent is looking around the house and giving them privacy to talk over the papers, Josh takes out his phone, googles it, and advises Tyler on how to sign the documents he’s been given. “I feel like a fake adult,” says Tyler.

“Don’t we all,” says Josh, nodding.

+

They get back home, and Josh tells him he should celebrate.

Tyler asks, “What are we celebrating?”

He’s trying to remember good things that have happened to him in the past few days.

“Your oddly spontaneous house-buying. Would you like a drink?”

He hasn’t thought about getting tipsy with Josh in ages, and he hasn’t done it in longer. Josh barely drinks in front of Tyler, but probably not out of respect. Josh just doesn’t have any interest in drinking if he’s doing it alone. “No, thanks. I’ll watch you do it.”

“Your loss,” says Josh, which makes Tyler look up in surprise, and he keeps his seat at the counter while Josh takes a wine bottle out of the cupboard. “I’ll get out an extra glass just in case.”

Nodding, Tyler rests his chin on his hands and watches Josh pour wine. Josh spills it on his white shirt, looks up at the ceiling for a minute like he’s praying, and then continues pouring wine.

Tyler is trying not to laugh at him.

Josh, who can sense these things, says, “Please, Tyler. Don't laugh at me. I’m just trying to get smashed, and higher powers are not on my side this week.”

“I thought we were celebrating!”

Tyler is beginning to think that Josh would be doing this whether or not Tyler had bought a house.

“_You’re_ celebrating. I’m wishing my roommate had paid the water bill.”

Tyler says, “What’s the worst thing that happened to you this week? Did you even leave the house?”

“Yes, Tyler, I left the house. Unlike some of us, I bothered to make friends after age 18. And, I could not even begin to list the trials and tribulations of life as Josh Dun. I got a notice—apparently not the first, according to the sheet—about how we haven’t been paying our water bill! It wasn’t my month to pay it!”

“I didn’t know that.” Personally, Tyler thinks Josh is overreacting to this. He also isn’t sure why Josh is telling him. “Did you pay it anyways?”

“Yes, but that’s not the point! The point is I’ve had a bad week!”

“My week was okay.”

Josh looks Tyler directly in the eye, and without breaking contact, drinks about half of his glass.

“Yes, of course it was. You’re a married man. You’ve got a house, which you’re probably going to live in until the wedding.”

“Yeah,” agrees Tyler, “I’m getting married.” He stops and thinks about what Josh just said. “I wasn’t really planning on living there right now, though.”

“You’re just going to let it sit there with no one in it? Your new house is going to be lonely in its neighborhood, lost and surrounded by houses that look literally exactly the same.”

Josh waits a second—Tyler guesses he wants to emotional gravity of the situation to sink it—before continuing, “I mean, you can stay with me until we finish the track list, but that’s going to be soon. I figured you would sell your apartment and move there with Jenna. Did you text her about it yet?”

Tyler thinks that Josh knows for a fact Tyler has not thought about or done any of these things, and is instead giving him roundabout advice.

“I’m sure the house will be fine without me, and no, I haven’t texted Jenna. I will, though. Also, I don’t think she’s interested in living with me until we’re married. I know she likes where she lives, and she’s said before she doesn’t want to leave for at least a year.” He hopes Josh will remind him to text her, because he’s probably going to forget.

“Maybe you could move in with her, then, until you’re married.”

Tyler thinks abruptly about days ago, when he asked Josh, _are you kicking me out_, all soft syllables and shaky undertones. He can hear himself in his head.

“She wouldn’t want that. Her house is small, and she’s said her and her roommate are cramped.”

“Are you sure you don’t want wine?” Josh sounds skeptical. He nods toward Tyler, and Tyler realizes he’s gripping the countertop kind of hard.

He shrugs. At this point, he doesn’t really have a lot to lose. It’s not like it’s going to become a hobby, and like Josh said: they’re celebrating. Something. “Okay, I’ll have some.”

“Alright, Tyler,” says Josh, kind of sarcastically, and fills up the other glass.

They sit there in comfortable silence. Josh has his phone out on the counter and is flicking through social media with his left hand and holding his glass with his right. Tyler wants to see if he’s going to accidentally drop the glass when he inevitably turns to show Tyler a picture.

He doesn’t, but he does set the glass down loud enough to make both of them jump before pouring himself and then Tyler more.

Josh says, “Do you know any drinking games?”

Tyler doesn’t. He says, carefully, “I don’t drink enough for this to be a thing that I know.”

“I wasn’t sure; you always manage to surprise me.”

Tyler runs his finger over the rim of his glass. He wasn’t expecting that. He’s relied on Josh’s uncanny ability to see through him for a while now. “I do?”

“Sure,” says Josh. “I wasn’t expecting you to propose. I mean, when I thought about it, I guess it makes sense, but when you first told me, no. Definitely not.”

He can’t really think of anything to say to that, so he asks, “Why?”

“Timing.” Josh makes an incredibly ambiguous hand-gesture.

“We’ve been dating for a while.”

“Sure,” says Josh, “But you always seemed so static.” Josh might be more than a little buzzed based off this statement.

Although, to be fair, it’s not like he had any trouble questioning their relationship when he was sober.

“And,” adds Josh, “You know. Timing.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“Look, Tyler, we’re not going to talk about this because neither of us wants to, especially you, but I can count the days between us having sex and the day you proposed to Jenna on one hand.”

Tyler jerks up from staring at his glass. This counts as talking about it. He thinks, _No he can’t. It’s been nine days. _He has enough self-preservation skills to stop himself from saying it, though.

Him proposing to Jenna had nothing to do with Josh; he isn’t even sure what Josh is assuming.

He’s not drunk enough for his brain to feel like it does in this moment.

There are seven things he could say to this, and none of them will make Josh take it back.

Tyler says, “We didn’t have sex.”

Josh says, “Just kidding. I changed my mind. I’m not drunk enough for this conversation.”

“We didn’t have sex,” Tyler says again, louder this time.

Exasperated, Josh says, “For God’s sake, Tyler, how did you manage to concentrate on the least important part of what I said?”

“Are you saying I proposed because of that?”

“What? No, I didn’t say that. You asked why I thought the timing was weird, and I answered.”

“I didn’t propose because of you,” Tyler argues. It is very important that Josh knows this.

Josh elaborates. “I just meant, I mean, if it were me, I don’t know if that would be the most immediate move in the relationship I was in.”

“Okay,” says Tyler, softly.

“Okay.” Josh sounds like he deeply regrets the past two minutes.

Josh goes back to scrolling on his phone after a moment.

“Do you think we’ll be happy together?” Tyler cuts in. He’s aware of what he sounds like: young and unsure.

He just has to know, right now, what Josh thinks.

“My only thought at this exact moment is that I should drink more wine.”

Tyler wishes Josh would take this more seriously. “But do you think we’ll be happy? Forever?”

“Give me ten minutes of not answering that, and then I will answer it.”

Tyler thumbs the base of his glass and takes small sips while Josh tries his best to get drunk in ten minutes. He sets a timer.

“Okay,” says Josh, after Tyler’s phone beeps, “Here are my thoughts.”

Based on the way Josh’s eyes have become unfocused, they’re not going to be very good ones.

“I think you guys will be happy because you will both be trying very hard to be happy. Hopefully not independently, in your case. I think Jenna, who is still the most wonderful person I have ever met, is going to want to make you happy and sometimes you’re going to have to fake it for her. Did you catch that, Tyler? You’re going to have to, or else she’s going to get upset, and then you’ll get distant because you won’t know what to do, and at least one of you is going to come to me about it and then _I’ll_ have to deal with it.”

From the way Josh manages to articulate this, even as Tyler listens to him combine certain words that should usually have a distinct ending, Tyler can tell that he’s thought about it several times before.

“Those seem like kind of selfish reasons,” says Tyler.

“No. Only the last one is kind of selfish. The others are an accurate representation of the way your relationship will turn out if you don’t start trying harder.”

Josh is speaking in a way that makes Tyler think he’s not being purposefully mean, just honest.

He’s right, though. Even if Tyler thinks he’s not at this exact second, he has no doubt that whatever Josh is predicting about the emotional dynamic of his future marriage will prove itself given a few months.

Tyler says, “How?”

“How are you going to try harder?” Asks Josh. “It won’t be that difficult. I would start by texting her more often. It’s just—you guys _can_ be happy. I know you can, because I know you, and I know Jenna well enough.” Josh is rambling now.

“But if she thinks you’re unhappy, she’s going to be unhappy, and then she’s going to try hard enough to fix it that both of you get upset because we all know it’s not going to be you trying.”

Josh’s mouth twists. “Although, who knows. Maybe marriage will make you a changed man,” he adds.

“Your marriage advice is ‘try harder’?”

Josh is dim in the soft light of the kitchen, and when he hears Tyler’s response, he lays his head down on the counter and speaks into his arm.

“Yes, I just said that.” His voice is muffled. “Can we go to bed now?”

“Do you think it was a mistake?”

“Jesus, Tyler,” says Josh loudly, sitting up again. “Did you ever consider thinking this through more before you did it? Then I wouldn’t be sitting here listening to you regret every single one of your life choices. What would you like to talk about next? Your failed basketball career?”

“Um,” says Tyler.

“Wait, I’m not done,” cuts in Josh.

Tyler lets out a breath and looks at the bottle of wine. He wasn’t even going to say anything.

This is why he hasn’t drunk with Josh in so long—because Josh is far, far too honest when he’s like this.

Josh looks like he’s going to continue with something strong, but he just mumbles something about Tyler’s inability to play drums that Tyler barely catches.

Then he says, “Maybe I should date.”

Tyler says, “What?” Josh doesn’t date. Or at least not seriously; not serious enough for him to have talked about it with Tyler or to have introduced anyone to him or to have said anything about ever.

“You know, find someone to go out with. It’s a thing people do. You should know.”

Tyler doesn’t say anything.

“I guess technically you’re not dating anyone anymore. Engaged. You’ve leveled up,” Josh amends. “We can’t all be you.”

Josh’s tone of voice implies that no one would want to be Tyler.

“I guess,” mumbles Tyler.

Josh looks weirdly pitying when he glances at Tyler. They're still sitting in near complete darkness at the corner of Josh’s countertop, Josh to Tyler’s right on the other edge.

Standing up relatively smoothly for someone who just stumbled over the word ‘engaged,’ Josh says, “I’m going to sleep. Don’t think too hard.” He lets his arm brush against Tyler’s back as he walks towards his room.

+

Tyler doesn't text Jenna because he forgets and Josh does not remind him, but Jenna comes over the next morning anyways.

Josh is the one to tell him this as it is happening.

Both of them watch her car pull up in the driveway, and Josh says, “Oh, right. She texted me this morning and told me to tell you that she was dropping by to say hello. She was visiting someone who lived right next to us, or something. Anyways. She’s here now.”

“She texted you and not me?”

“Well, you’re not a very reliable responder.”

Tyler opens the door for her.

“Tyler!” She says. “I wasn’t sure if your phone had broken or something, so I texted Josh. He told you I was coming over, right?”

Tyler nods.

“I was in the neighborhood because one of my older students asked if I could cat-sit for him. Also, I thought we were going to do something yesterday, but you never called! Day three of being engaged and we’re already an old married couple.” She’s smiling. Her hair is up in a messy bun, some of it spilling over onto her face.

She reminds Tyler of a piece of art he saw at the museum when the two of them were there, one of those impressionist pieces with a woman standing in a field of daisies.

Tyler grins. “We’re already there. We’ve skipped over all those boring steps, you know. We basically don’t even need to bother with the wedding, or whatever that is.”

Jenna laughs, clear and high.

Josh, who’s standing behind them in the living room, says “Jenna, you look like sunshine after three weeks of rain. Would you like to sit down?”

“Am I the three weeks of rain?” asks Tyler, brow furrowed.

They say “yes” in practical unison, which makes Tyler feel like he’s in a sit-com. He tells them so.

Tyler and Jenna sit on opposite sides of the couch.

Jenna says, “Have you told your parents yet?”

She looks so happy. Tyler can see it in the way she’s glowing; she keeps twisting her ring on her finger. She’s probably told her friends and maybe even announced it to some of her classes now. An aside during one of her lectures.

“I told them before I asked! That’s my grandmother’s ring, you know. I didn’t just steal it without their knowledge. I talked to yours, too. I figured that’s the kind of thing they would be interested in.”

“Oh,” says Jenna, “I knew you told my parents. I called them after you dropped me off. They said you were very nice and awkward over the phone. Then they asked me if I was sure you weren’t lying about your job, because they said someone who’s famous shouldn’t be as apprehensive as you.”

This sounds exactly like something Jenna’s dad would say.

“We’re not that famous,” Tyler argues. “I think if we’d been interviewed by Rolling Stone that would make sense, but we’re not quite there yet. I’ll call your dad and tell him when he can start making fun of me again, though. I’ll do it for us.”

“It would mean the world to me,” says Jenna, very seriously.

“Your dad can call me while he’s waiting!” Josh yells from the kitchen.

Tyler says, “He’s probably kidding.”

+

Jenna gets into telling him about the student she’s cat-sitting for, and then about how excited her parents were.

“They like you a lot,” she says. “They think you’re a very righteous young man, and that it’s nice you’ve made yourself a career in singing. Personally, I think they're overestimating your worth—” Josh interjects with “I absolutely agree” from the kitchen, “—but I’ll let them think what they want for now.”

“I think maybe you and Josh should stop spending time together without me. Also, you should block his number,” says Tyler, glumly.

Josh comes over and stands behind the couch between them. “Tyler, I honestly thought you would remember this on your own, but as you prove again and again, you simply don’t have the ability to remember anything beyond your own lyrics. Don’t you have an announcement?”

“Oh,” says Tyler, hesitant, because he forgot to think about how Jenna would react to this. “So, I maybe bought a house.”

“You what?” asks Jenna. “Why?”

“Um, to live in.”

“No, like—why now? I’ve told you, you can always stay with me. I don’t really mind. We’ve got room. I mean, congratulations, but I wish we could have done it together!” She doesn’t sound angry, just disappointed.

“I wasn’t sure,” says Tyler. “I sort of wanted to surprise you. Also, I didn’t want to keep living in my apartment. Staying with Josh has made me not want to ever do that again. I’ve grown used to this. There are no neighbors yelling at me. Well, there’s Josh, but he only does it sometimes, so it’s alright.”

Most of this is true. He hopes neither Josh nor Jenna ask when, exactly, he’s planning on moving into his new house, because he doesn’t know.

He just doesn’t want it to be now.

“So when will you be moving from your temporary home—my house—to your new one?” Josh is still behind them, leaning over with his hands on the backboard of the couch. “See, I was under the apparently wrong impression that Jenna didn’t have room, and that both of you were waiting until marriage to live together. Not sure where I got this idea.” He pauses.

Jenna looks confused; Tyler stares at the carpet. There’s a blue-ish spot from where Josh dropped a smoothie on it two weeks ago.

“Sorry,” says Tyler, “Maybe I didn’t hear you? I didn’t think you would want that.”

“It’s alright, maybe I forgot to tell you. Or something. It’s fine. And I would definitely want that. I know you and Josh are writing and putting things together right now, but I promised my roommate I would stay and pay my part of the rent at least until the end of the year, so you can always come stay with me and then we can both move to your new house sometime next year.”

Tyler nods carefully. “I just didn’t know if you would… want to do that. But yeah, that sounds good. The house is nice. We can walk to it from here. There’s a garden and everything. I think you’ll like it, when we finally move in.”

“I know it’s a bit untraditional, but it’s probably even better if we live together for a few months before the wedding. Get used to each other, and all that.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” says Tyler.

Jenna stays to eat lunch with them. Josh orders pizza, and once they finish, they sit around in the living room, Josh on the loveseat next to them.

Josh says, directed towards Jenna, “Have you seen the new James Bond movie? I hear it’s good. You can probably drag Tyler along with you.”

“No,” she says. “I’d like to. Tyler, I’m going to pretend it was you who came up with the idea for the movie and not Josh.”

She turns to Tyler. “I’m free tomorrow evening.”

“We could go,” says Tyler. He’s never seen a Bond movie in his life. “But I thought Josh had a drumming thing tomorrow, so maybe we could go Sunday night.”

“Okay,” says Josh, uncomfortably. “I actually sort of meant the two of you could go do this, seeing as I’m not technically a third member of this relationship, but I appreciate the invite. I’m always happy to third wheel.”

Tyler kind of feels like he wants to die.

Jenna starts laughing at him. “Wow, Tyler. You two might want to consider spending less time together. That was terrible to watch.”

“Anyways,” says Josh. “How is the new school year treating you, Jenna?”

+

Around twenty minutes after Jenna leaves, Josh confronts Tyler about houses.

“You could have just said something,” he says.

They’re still sitting in the living room. Tyler’s trying his best to look like he’s got no idea what Josh is talking about. “I can picture the words coming out of your mouth right now: _Josh, you’re right. It is kind of weird that I bought a house and don’t want to move into it for a while. Instead, I want to live with you until I get my life together enough to move in with my fiancée. _That’s all you had to say. You didn’t have to make up a bunch of stuff. Although, now that I think about, I’m not sure you did. It’s more likely you were actually just not paying attention when she was telling you she would love for you to move in.”

Tyler is going to be as honest as he possibly can be for the rest of the day so these things stop happening to him.

He says, “I kind of thought that was implied. Also, I really didn’t hear her. I’m not sure which one is worse, though: not listening or lying about it, so it doesn’t really matter.” He shrugs.

Josh laughs. “Honesty hour with Tyler Joseph? What else are you going to tell me? It’s fine. I get it, I guess.”

Of course he does.

Tyler says, “I don’t know how I should feel. I want to stay with you. Sure, I’ll move in with Jenna once we’re married, absolutely, but we’re working on an album now. And after that, we’ve got a tour. I kind of feel like moving from your house to her house and then leaving again for a month would be a waste of effort.”

Josh’s eyes have widened slightly. “Okay,” he says. His voice is softly alarmed. “What about after we come back from tour? What are you going to do then?”

“I don’t know. Should I?” When they come back, he’s still going to have to move his stuff from Josh’s to Jenna’s if he decides to live with her until the actual wedding. He doesn’t quite know, exactly, what the point of that would be.

He says none of this aloud.

“Don’t ask me that,” says Josh. “I’ve never been engaged. Maybe—maybe you should know, though.” He doesn’t elaborate, just tilts his head back against the cushion.

Tyler watches Josh shut his eyes from across the room, legs stretched out in front of him like he’s going to sleep there and eyelashes dark against his cheeks.

“We should pick tour dates,” says Tyler.

“Mm-hmm,” hums Josh.

+

They won’t pick tour dates until they finish the track list, which they don’t do for another two weeks or so.

When they finally finish practicing the last song on the album, Josh throws his drumsticks against the wall and stands up, knocking over his stool.

“Tyler,” he says, over-dramatic. “Get me the phone. I’m going to call God and tell him we’re finally ready to book studio time.”

Tyler rolls his eyes. “I’ll call the manager while you do that.”

Michael is very pleased.

“Record the single you want to release first,” he advises. “We can use some of the money to start booking venues.”

“Yes, Michael, I’ve done this before,” says Tyler.

He did not miss Michael.

“Is Josh there?” asks Michael. He sounds carefully neutral. Josh and Michael did not always get along, but neither of them ever had a choice in the matter.

“Yes, of course. Would you like to speak to him?” Tyler doesn’t even bother to listen to Michael politely decline.

Michael tells Tyler he’ll email him a list of venue ideas and that he’ll call the record company, along with some other things Tyler’s not paying attention to.

He hangs up the phone and turns to Josh. “I think maybe we should get a better manager,” he says. “Or, really, just one who likes both of us. No offense.”

“Ah,” says Josh, thoughtfully. “But would we have ever gotten anywhere in the first place without the love of my life, Michael?”

“Good question,” says Tyler, deadpan. “Probably not.”

_Vessel _is like a better, more professional version of _Regional_.

“We essentially re-recorded an early album,” says Tyler in an interview the following week. Michael is making them do pre-release press as they record the album.

“I sound pretty bad in _Regional_, but my voice got a little stronger in _Vessel_. There are also a lot of tracks in _Vessel _that weren’t in _Regional_, and they’re much better, so hopefully people will like it.”

“I think he sounds great in both,” interjects Josh. He’s grinning, outrageously enough to confirm for Tyler that they’re never going to have an entirely serious interview again.

Tyler can’t really say he minds.

+

Recording takes a long time, but not as long as other more popular bands advertise. This is because they don’t have enough money to book that much studio time, so by the time they come in, they know exactly how and what parts they’re going to record.

The most tiring part of the process is the flight to LA and finding the actual studio.

“Rocket Carousel Studios,” Josh is saying, “Sounds like a fake name. It’s probably a fake place.”

Their taxi driver, who has been driving around the block for ten minutes, seems to agree.

“It’s fine,” Tyler tells him. “You can just let us out here. We’ll find it.”

Josh looks at Tyler with an expression that says they won’t.

It doesn’t take them so long once they’re walking around. LA is bright and busy, even before 10 am. “We’re not in Ohio anymore,” says Josh in his ear. Tyler lets out a breath.

The studio, once they finally do find it, is tucked away near a Greek restaurant. The sign is smaller than would make sense.

The man who’s going to help them record meets them in the lobby.

“I’m Greg Wells,” he tells them, voice low and booming. “But just Greg is fine.”

Tyler nods politely and reaches to take his hand.

Josh does the same, and then asks Greg why his sign is so small. Tyler hopes Greg has a sense of humor.

“To give our artists some privacy,” Greg explains, big hands moving up and down with his speech. “Fans can pretty easily find out where albums are being recorded, but if the studio is hard to find, they give up faster than you might think.”

“Ah,” says Josh.

“Now,” says Greg. “I know you boys have limited time. Let’s get you set up and started, all right? Where are you staying?”

“Um,” answers Tyler, “In one of the hotels near here. We can walk to it from here.”

“Great!” Greg sounds very enthusiastic. “It can be hard to catch a taxi super late at night.”

Sincerely hoping that they’re not actually going to be here past 8pm every night, Tyler follows Greg into the studio.

The studio is a glass-walled and small room. Expensive looking tech equipment is everywhere.

When the producer leaves, Josh says, “We won’t actually be here for that long, right?”

Tyler grimaces. “I hope not.”

+

They actually are there for that long, late into the night, for that and for all the following days.

The days pass slowly, but the few weeks they spend there feel like liquid in Tyler’s hands. They don’t record on Sundays, but they don’t do much else, either.

The other days, they go early and they leave late.

It’s hard to tell time in the studio. There aren’t any windows. When Josh starts missing the drums entirely, and Tyler misses entire lines on his ukelele, or can’t hit a note at all-- then they leave.

They tried to go out to dinner once when they finished early, but Tyler almost fell asleep in his appetizer and Josh knocked over a glass of water when he reached across the table to push Tyler awake.

Sundays are lazy days. Josh will wake up earlier and go for a run, and when he comes back, Tyler will be awake and sitting up in bed, scrolling through his phone. He always calls Jenna on Sundays; he’s got a reminder on his phone.

Sundays usually go something like this:

Josh will tell Tyler about something going on near them, and that Tyler would probably like it.

Tyler will still not be 100 percent awake, but he will agree to go to the thing with Josh.

They will argue over who showers first, and Josh will always win. He will get water all over the floor because he never learns, and Tyler will almost die each time he tries to walk into the bathroom.

They will stay at whatever event Josh was talking about for an hour or so, and then they will eat outside. After this, they’ll either walk around for a few hours or go back to the hotel and order room service.

Tyler thinks the weekdays are exhausting, but Sundays are nice. He’ll miss some of this.

When they finish, they fly home immediately.

They sit in seats at the gate right next to theirs because Josh wanted an outlet and all the ones at their original gate were being used.

He says, “Tyler, I think we may have done a good job with this one.”

Tyler says, “I think so too.”

“We could be really good. We could be even better.”

“We could be.”

Josh doesn’t respond, so Tyler doesn’t say anything for a while.

“I don’t like airports,” says Tyler, softly. He’s not looking at Josh. He’s watching a mother say goodbye to her kid, who must be going back to college. Both of them look sad, but adjusted. No one is crying.

Tyler turns to Josh. “They’re an accepted kind of sadness.”

Josh moves to rest his elbow on the arm of Tyler’s chair. “Are you saying they would be better if people didn’t say goodbye in them?”

“I guess,” says Tyler. “I don’t like it. Everyone leaving something they know, all at the same time. I can feel it.” He wouldn’t be saying this if they hadn’t had to wake up at five in the morning to catch the flight.

“Some people are going back,” says Josh. “We’re going back.”

“Yeah,” says Tyler. “I suppose so.”

+

They get back and it feels like maybe they’ve been on tour, or maybe just dropped off the face of the earth for a few weeks.

The first single drops in early September, close to when they leave the recording studio. Greg helped them plan the schedule out. He said there was an art to it, the release of songs over a year.

Tyler figures he means the money part of it. He’d rather just release them all at once.

Laying his suitcase down, he rubs his knuckles over his eyes.

“So, there’s that,” says Josh. “I hoped we picked the right single to release.”

“It barely matters.”

Josh raises an eyebrow. “Of course it matters.”

“I mean, I'm not even sure if people are going to want to listen to it,” Tyler says. He’s not. And this is, for sure, the first album that he knows people will listen to without doubt.

Not necessarily because it’s better—just because they’re going to be advertised by people who know what they’re doing.

Josh waits for him to continue.

“Legitimate critical reception for the first time in our careers,” says Tyler, mostly to himself.

“People are going to listen to this and have opinions,” he adds. “So the popularity of the first single isn’t going to be what makes or breaks our success anymore.”

Josh shrugs. “So are you saying critics don’t matter, or are you saying the fans’ opinions don’t matter?”

Tyler hesitates. “The critics, I guess.”

He’s not so sure. They don’t have a big enough fanbase right now for Tyler to have a real impression of the impact a large group of people could have if they liked or disliked the album.

Some of this is purely nerves. He doesn’t know if he wants people to listen to it.

“As long as we have enough fans, I suppose it doesn’t. But this album is going to be what gives us those fans, so we might as well try.”

“I guess,” says Tyler. Josh is right.

“You’re just worried people won’t like listening to you sing about your feelings,” says Josh, half a joke. He’s framed in the doorway, light behind him.

Tyler wishes he would come in the rest of the way. It’s making the room feel unbalanced.

“They won’t mind if they feel like you know you,” Josh is saying, low. “Sure, stop caring about the critics. As long as you make yourself accessible, you’re right. It won’t matter.”

“How am I going to do that?” Why Tyler’s feeling like he’s lost all creative license after getting signed, he’s not sure. It should be the other way around.

“You’re already part way there. Just be funnier in interviews, sell yourself, whatever. Maybe ask someone other than me for advice.” Josh is smiling now. “We’re in the same band, you know. It’s a group effort. I’ll help.”

Nodding in agreement, Tyler picks at a loose thread on his suitcase. There’s a copy of the album inside it, on a real record and everything.

Greg had given it to them as a gift, Josh had taken it from Greg, signed it twice, and then given it to Tyler.

He had said something like, “From the two members of Twenty One Pilots to you, Tyler.”

Tyler says, “Come inside.”

Josh shuts the door behind him. “We’ll be good. You don’t need to worry. And anyways, we have a while to prepare jokes for you before we have to leave. You have several weeks to pretend we’re not going to release a single.”

“Are you implying I’m not funny enough to come up with the jokes on my own?”

Josh tilts his head back and laughs, not answering.

+

Tyler mostly forgets that Jenna had asked him to move in with her when they were done writing until she calls him about it.

She doesn’t bring it up face to face, either. Tyler’s learning she’s non-confrontational. Actually, Josh might have been the one to tell him that about her.

She waits until early October around a month after they come back to bring it up, too, so Tyler has to pause a moment and remember what she’s talking about.

Josh is sitting at the table when she does, practicing his signature. He had said something about how if they’re going to be famous, he’s going to need a better one.

“Not that I’m the only one who needs improvement,” he says loudly, as Tyler crosses the room to get the phone. “Yours is perhaps even worse than mine. No one is going to be able to tell them apart if we don’t work on it.”

He’s writing on a big piece of construction paper in permanent marker. Tyler just hopes he doesn’t run out of room and starts signing the table.

“Hey Jenna,” he says, once he sees the Caller ID. “What’s going on?”

“Not much,” she says. “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be the one to call me when you were ready, but now it’s been a while, so I decided to do it. When are you planning on coming?”

“What?” asks Tyler.

“You know, what we talked about before you left.”

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah, of course. I wasn’t entirely sure. You know, when you wanted me to move, or, or when it would work best for me to leave.”

Josh is looking up from his writing.

Jenna says, “As soon as possible! I’ve missed you.” Tyler saw her a few days ago.

When Tyler hangs up a few minutes later, Josh says, “The moving out party approaches, I see. I would offer to help you find your clothes, but I can’t promise I’m going to be able to tell yours apart from mine at this point.”

Tyler huffs out a breath of laugher. “We have a bit longer before I have to leave. We’ve got to get the tour and stuff together.”

Sounding slightly unsure, Josh says, “Alright. It’s not going to be that long of a tour.”

He doesn’t bring it up again until the next week when Tyler gets back from church. Jenna had picked him up.

The morning is awkward, before.

Tyler forgets they’re going at all when he wakes up, then Jenna pulls into the driveway, and he asks Josh to stall while he runs to grab clothing from Josh’s room.

He walks out with his shirt buttoned-up incorrectly, but, he thinks as Jenna stares at him with raised eyebrows and Josh looks skeptical, at least it’s tucked in.

Josh and Jenna are standing in silence.

“We wouldn’t all be staring at my shirt if you two had managed to start a conversation instead of staying in the doorway for five minutes,” says Tyler. He feels defensive. They still might be on time, if they hurry.

“Well,” says Josh, closed-off, “We actually did that, but then I ran out of things to say, and then Jenna actually asked if you had forgotten or not, so we’ve already covered most of it.”

“Sorry,” says Tyler.

Jenna looks apologetic. Josh does not.

Fingers fumbling over the buttons of his shirt, Tyler says, “I think we can still make it.”

Josh reaches over and moves Tyler’s hands out of the way with more force than necessary. “Good luck,” he says.

He’s re-buttoning Tyler’s shirt up from where Tyler missed a button in the middle, hands brushing over Tyler’s chest whenever Tyler breathes in deep.

“How do you manage,” Josh is saying.

Jenna waits and watches from the doorway. “Josh, are you planning on coming?”

Tyler looks up. Josh says, “No, sorry, but maybe next time,” as he pushes the last button in. “Go have fun,” he tells Tyler. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

When he comes back, Josh asks him when he’s planning to leave.

Tyler returns in the afternoon. He had gone out to lunch with Jenna and some of her friends, and then one of Jenna’s friends, whose name he can’t remember, had driven him home, while Jenna had gone to pick something up from the college.

Josh is doing something on his laptop at the desk. Maybe emailing their label asking for a new manager, he had talked about that.

Josh isn’t looking at him. “Tyler, have you ever thought that maybe staying with me is the root of all your relationship issues?”

Tyler says, “What did you do?”

Josh lets out a breath. “Not me, specifically. Just… I think you’re spending more time with me than you are with Jenna. And I know, I know that we work together, so sometimes you’re going to need to be with just me, but I think she feels like you’re putting off moving in with her.”

“Is this about the buttons? Or being late?” asks Tyler. He’s not sure what Josh is talking about.

“What buttons? What are you—never mind. Tyler—It’s not really about being late in particular. Not this specific time. It’s about being figuratively late, but a lot of times.”

Tyler’s not sure Josh has to go as far as telling him he’s been metaphorically late in every aspect of his relationship. It seems to be succeeding, so he can’t be that terrible.

He says, “I’m not using you as an excuse to avoid staying with her, if that’s what you’re saying. She would probably tell me if she actually felt like that. You don’t have to speak for her.” He really hopes Josh is not speaking for her.

He thinks, sometimes, that Josh and Jenna might talk about him even more than Josh tells him.

It should be ideal.

“Your fiancée and your best friend get along so well, you couldn’t dream of a better match,” his Mom had told him a day or so ago over the phone. “Do you know how many men would love to be in your place? I hate all of your Dad’s friends. I always have.”

Tyler had said, “Um,” and the conversation had disintegrated from there.

His Dad won’t ever know what he’s not missing.

Josh probably shouldn’t know more about Jenna’s feelings towards their relationship than Tyler does, but maybe he doesn’t. Tyler thinks he could really just be trying to help.

Looking annoyed, Josh says, “That’s not quite what I’m saying, and I’m not sure she would tell you. She’s not at that point yet, but she’s going to be if you keep doing this.”

Tyler retracts his previous thought about Josh coming to him about his relationship with Jenna from the goodness of his heart.

Tyler tries to understand. “Why do you care? And why has she talked with you about this, and not me?” He thinks he knows why, but he wants to hear Josh say it.

Josh looks like he’s counting backwards from ten.

“I’m _trying_ to help the both of you, Tyler,” he snaps. “Remember when I told you a month or so ago that you were going to need to try harder if you wanted the kind of relationship she’s expecting, that you’re expecting? I didn’t say that for the benefit of Jenna, it’s not just her. You making a mess out of your relationship is going to upset both of you, and then you’re going to be even more exhausted and unpresentable.”

“I don’t… So you think me moving out would be the best for us?” Tyler feels blurry around the edges. He doesn’t know if Josh has been building up to this or if something pushed him over the edge.

If Josh wants him to move out, though, he can’t say no.

“Us as in you and Jenna, yes,” says Josh.

This is not what Tyler meant, but he doesn’t say anything.

Josh adds, “You can even start by remembering things she wants to do. Like going to church with her, for instance. She came to me because… she said that you would listen to me. Or, maybe that you’d do it if I told you.” He trails off at the end.

He can try harder. He can try harder, even stretched thin like this between the both of them, but he doesn’t know if the solution is moving out. “I didn’t mean to be late this morning.”

“I know, and so does she, but it’s the fact that you forgot. Just. I think if you mess this one up, you’re going to regret it.”

“Do you think….” starts Tyler. “Do you think maybe I could move to her house when we get back from touring?”

“Tyler,” says Josh, soft like he hasn’t in ages.

“I’m not putting it off,” Tyler says. “I want to, I will. But can I stay with you until we have to leave? We only have a few weeks.”

Josh says, “I’m not going to tell you no. You might want to talk to Jenna, but I’m not going to tell you no.”

+

Jenna, when Tyler calls her, is disappointed. Not overtly so, but enough that Tyler can tell.

“If you think this is going to work best for you guys, it’s fine,” she says.

Tyler says, for the second time during the phone call, “I'm sorry. I’m going to move in with you immediately when we get back. I’ll get all my clothes together, and take them with me on tour, and then go straight to your house.”

When Jenna responds, she sounds like she’s smiling. “That would be nice,” she says.

“Then,” he continues, “We’re going to get married. We’re going to move from your small house into my slightly larger one. And then we’ll adopt a dog, or something, and we’ll accidentally let it use the bathroom in Josh’s yard.”

Laughing, Jenna says, “I can’t believe I forget how much of a romantic you are.”

“Me neither,” says Tyler. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Yeah,” she murmurs over the line.

Josh says, when he gets off the phone, “If you’re really planning to do that, I’m going to put a fence around my yard. One of the ones with barbed wire.”

Tyler smiles. “You don’t have to worry. I’m allergic to dogs.”

“You mean you made it up?” Josh gasps.

“Everything I do is for attention,” says Tyler. “I can’t remember the last time I said something real. Our album? Fake. The story we told the interviewer about you resuscitating me after I choked on a gummy bear I found in your couch? Fake. Adopting a dog? Fake. It’s all for the press.”

“I should have known,” says Josh, shaking his head. “You might want to tell her. She’s probably fantasizing about it as we speak.”

“Mm-hmm,” Tyler agrees. He pulls out his phone. “Aren’t we planning to release tour dates today?”

“Yes,” says Josh. “Weird how I don’t really have to keep track of these things now that we’ve got a real manager helping us out.”

“Did you fire Michael?” asks Tyler.

“Yes, and I’ve never felt more free.” Josh holds up his phone. “Meet Chris.”

Josh isn’t even holding up a picture, just a text conversation where he’s messaging someone named “Chris,” whose name is accompanied by several fire emojis.

“Michael wasn’t that bad,” complains Tyler. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him. He invited me to a Christmas party once!”

“You know he didn’t invite to that Christmas party? Me.”

Tyler liked Michael. Also, Michael had been the one who helped them get signed. “He’s never going to want to talk to me again,” says Tyler.

“Me neither,” says Josh, unsympathetically.

“I should write him a thank-you note.” Tyler is essentially talking to himself.

Josh, who is ignoring him, says, “Some of these locations are so weird. Does anyone even know who we are in Rhode Island?”

“Maybe not now, but in a few days. Depending on if people like the single.”

+

The first show is in Ohio.

Since the tour is almost all on the East Coast, they get a bus. It’s so much nicer than the one they had a year ago.

Josh says, “The microwave works. Tyler, can you believe this? I should start going to church again.”

“Does it heat evenly and everything?”

He watches Josh try to cook instant noodles before they’ve left the parking lot.

They sit across from each other while their manager drives, switching off with one or two of the roadies. Josh is saying “We’ve got roadies now. We’re that kind of band.”

“We have like, three.”

Josh scowls. “We probably would have had more sign up if we had given our tour a better name and you hadn’t come up with it at the last second without telling me.”

Tyler says, “Mostly November is a great name for a tour. We basically didn’t have to release dates.”

“You’re banned from picking tour names without telling me. It’s ridiculous. My mom called me and asked us where we got the idea. I had to explain to her that you made a split-second decision, and then that any decision you make without me is probably going to be a bad one.”

“I think it’s catchy.”

Based on the interview questions they get about the name, no one else gets it either.

An interviewer for a radio station in Miami is staring at them from across a studio. Tyler’s incredibly glad they aren’t videotaping this one, because he hasn’t slept in about 28 hours.

Josh looks terrible, so Tyler must look bad, if not worse.

When he asks them what the name means Josh says, “A mistake I did not make.”

“It was sort of last second,” Tyler supplements. “The tour is mostly during November.”

“I can see that,” says the interviewer. Josh glares, and then continues, because his filter turns off when he’s this tired, and this is about the twentieth time they’ve gotten this question.

“He didn’t bother to ask me, he didn’t bother to ask his girlfriend, his mom, the dog he doesn’t have—” Josh is saying.

The interviewer says, “Tyler’s got a girlfriend?”

Tyler says, “Fiancée,” and then wonders what he’s supposed to do in this situation. The interviewer looks like he’s just gotten a dish at a fancy restaurant that he waited forty-five minutes for.

Josh is starting to look like he’s realized what he’s done and says, “I’m not sure how okay she would be with us talking about her. We haven’t exactly asked.”

Tyler figures people are going to find out basic information anyways, so they might be the ones to tell it. “Her name’s Jenna. We’ve been engaged for a few months now.”

The interviewer’s got his hands crossed under his chin and still looks overly gleeful. “When’s the wedding?”

“I don’t know yet,” says Tyler. “Since we’ve just gotten signed, our touring schedule is a little unpredictable. Probably in the next year or so, though. I’d like it to be.”

He nods understandingly, and then announces something into his microphone. He tries to get both of them to talk more about it, but besides getting Tyler to admit he proposed in an art gallery, he doesn’t really get anywhere.

+

It’s easy to lose track of the things you tell people. Tyler accidentally tells the same fake story about how him and Josh met twice.

The questions are more intimate.

Tyler thinks it's a combination of the album being both personal and popular, as well as the increasing number of fans.

And there is a difference. It’s not just that people are always there to see them—although they are, because they’re headlining, all official and everything, and Tyler still gets a rush every single time he sees their names together on a sign—it’s that the fans who are there are far more dedicated that Tyler expected.

It’s off-putting to meet people who you never told where you grew up, but they know anyway. Josh doesn't seem to mind as much as Tyler.

He tells Tyler he should care less.

“It doesn’t really affect you,” Josh advises him as they eat dinner by the side of the road.

They’re somewhere in Virginia, on their way south. It’s cold even in the restaurant. Colored tufts of hair stick out of Josh’s hat, making him look younger. Tyler kind of wants to push them back into the fabric.

“I think it’s kind of nice,” Josh is saying. “So what if it’s a little creepy? These are the kinds of fans people are successful off of. This is the dedication that can make us great.”

“I don’t want to be great if it involves people knowing my mother’s middle name.”

“I’m not sure if you have a choice in this one. Anyways, how is this different from what you say in your songs?”

Tyler can’t really answer. Names and facts seem more concrete, somehow. “It’s a different kind of personal, I guess. People other than me are affected.”

Josh shrugs. “I get it. We can’t really do anything about it, though. Our label told us to work on being less private. Kids like that.”

“Yeah,” says Tyler. This tour is so different from the other ones in the little ways.

The fact that their manager and roadies are sitting in booths near them. The fact that they’re considering getting a security guard, because fans followed them from their last venue all the way to the bus. The fact that this is nothing like him and Josh sitting across from each other in a nearly empty diner like they used to, Tyler watching Josh shove dessert into his mouth at one in the morning and not thinking about being anywhere else.

Josh says, “What are you thinking about?”

“Nostalgia.” Tyler’s not looking at him. There’s a gas station across from them, sign glowing. The windows of the diner are frosted over, and the one car under the sign looks foggy.

“Do you miss having four people who knew who we were and not being able to use a microwave?”

Tyler bites his lower lip. “No.” He wants to say, _I miss you_, but it doesn’t make any sense. Josh is here, right across from him.

Giving in, Tyler stretches over the table and pushes the pieces of hair on Josh’s forehead back under the hat. “Sorry,” he says, once he’s done it. “They were annoying me.”

“Understandable,” says Josh, rough into the space between.

One of the roadies comes over to their table a few minutes later and tells them they need to go if they want to make it to the next venue before late afternoon.

Josh stands up first.

+

They talk more about their friendship, too, because people care more.

One of the interviews picks up on how they lived together, because Josh brings it up.

He’s saying, “You know, I know it seems like we released this album quickly after our previous one, and we did, but that's because Tyler’s a workaholic.”

The interviewer, who has long dark hair and told them her name was Jane, says, “How so?”

“Well,” Josh starts, “He refused to leave my house. It was ridiculous. I would ask night and day for him to drive back to his apartment.”

Tyler decides that if they’re going to exaggerate it, he might as well jump in. “That’s true,” he says. “He was offering to pay me as we got closer to the end. He’d say ‘Tyler, for forty dollars, will you leave now?’ And then I would tell him no and ask him if he could pick up doughnuts for tonight.”

Josh sighs dramatically.

Jane says, “So you all lived together? For how long? Do you still?”

“I don’t know,” says Tyler. “About a year, a little less.”

“Not technically,” says Josh. “I’m not sure if Tyler ever remembered to sell his apartment. It was like a long term Sleep-On-The-Couch kind of situation.”

“He never got me a mattress,” argues Tyler.

“You never asked!”

Laughing, Jane says, “I can see the chemistry. This is why you have so many fans, then.”

“Our chemistry? I don’t think so,” says Josh. “I think it’s Tyler’s patented ‘I spent a year sleeping on a couch’ look.”

“Anyways,” Josh continues. “He’s moving once we get back. It’s all a lie. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but he’s a married man now.”

“Almost,” agrees Tyler.

They're sitting in their hotel room on a Saturday night, and Josh asks him if he wants to go to church tomorrow. This is the first time he’s asked.

The hotels they’re staying in are nicer, which Tyler appreciates. He wants to stay.

Chris tells them that next tour, if they really wanted it, they’d be able to get separate rooms. Tyler had told him to spend the money somewhere else. He doesn’t mind it.

Tyler says, “Why, are you? I’ll go if you’re going.”

“No,” says Josh. “I was just curious. You’ve finally got the time, since the show is Sunday.”

“Oh. No, it’s alright.”

Josh lies down flat on the bed. “If Jenna gives you a pop quiz or something when you get back, you can’t blame me.”

“A pop quiz on church?”

“Absolutely,” says Josh. He’s got his arm thrown up over his eyes, so Tyler can only see his mouth moving.

Tyler gets off his own bed and goes to sit on Josh’s. “I used to write in hotel rooms.”

Josh says, “I know.”

Tyler’s sitting up against the headboard on Josh’s left. “When we got back from a show, during the night, while you were in the shower. That was the best time. I can’t do it anymore.”

“My showers weren’t that long.”

“No,” agrees Tyler. “That’s just when I had the most to say.”

Turning his head so he’s facing away from Tyler, looking at their closed blinds, Josh says, “Have you tried?”

“There’s no point. There’s a certain way I’ve got to feel, and here, I don’t. It’s only at home now.”

Tyler’s trying to remember what he felt in cockroach-infested motel rooms two years ago that made him want to write like he did. Maybe linoleum floors and peeling wallpaper are more inspirational than fame.

Josh doesn’t respond for a minute. “My house is the motel room the general public can only dream of,” he says, eventually.

They get back from the tour in early December. Josh says, after they walk through the door, “You sold your apartment a while ago, right?”

Nodding, Tyler’s following Josh inside. He did it even before Josh is thinking, before they flew to LA to record.

“I lied to that lady in an interview on live TV,” says Josh. “Don’t you have someone to call?”

Tyler says, “I should get my stuff together,” and then sits down on the couch with Josh and watches him flick to a different channel every thirty seconds.

Jenna comes over within the hour.

She tells Tyler her roommate is paying for December, and then her part of the lease ends, so if Tyler wants to move into the house he’s purchased, it would work out.

“I’m kind of sick of the place I’m staying in now,” she adds.

“Hopefully you’ll like this one,” says Tyler. Jenna’s seen the outside, and Tyler hasn’t looked at it since he left in October to check the locks.

He asked one of the neighbors to make sure no one broke in.

Jenna says, “Are you packed?”

“He waited ever-so-politely for you to come and help him,” says Josh.

Smiling, Jenna stands up. “Lazy,” she says.

+

Separating Tyler’s clothing from Josh’s turns out to be harder than anyone, but especially Jenna, anticipates.

“You know,” she says, as they try to develop some sort of democratic method of sorting t-shirts, “I’m not sure I quite realized how close you two were until this exact moment.”

Josh says, “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. This is all Tyler’s fault. He doesn’t even ask before he comes into my room anymore. He just takes what he likes and then acts like he doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“I would expect nothing less,” says Jenna.

They manage to divide it fairly evenly, although admittedly, Josh has more clothes than Tyler, and Tyler likely ends up with more than he started out with.

Tyler leaves everything in boxes for the first few days. Jenna likes the house.

She likes the skylight in particular, the way they wake you up in the morning. She says her parents have one, and how her Mom says morning sunlight can replace coffee.

Tyler says, “Usually when I wake up it’s already light outside, so I don’t really have to deal with that effect.”

“When he wakes up, the sun is basically at its highest point. It’s not shining through the windows anymore unless it’s going down.” Josh is over, too.

Jenna grimaces. “I hope we can fix that.”

“I’ll try,” says Tyler.

Jenna is easy to live with. She lets Tyler have a few days alone before she brings all of her stuff over from her old house, and she unpacks quickly and quietly. Then she makes Tyler unpack all of his stuff.

“It looks nice,” says Jenna, surveying it once they’re done. “We should add some art, or maybe some houseplants.”

Tyler has a terrible reputation with houseplants. “Yeah,” he says. “I wonder what our parents would say,” he wonders out loud. “Aren't we technically living in sin?”

“Mine were surprisingly okay with it,” Jenna says. “Although, I think they’re a little more free than yours. Also, we’d have to be sleeping together for it to be living in sin.”

“We do sleep together!”

“We sleep in the same bed, Tyler,” says Jenna, rolling her eyes.

Jenna’s actually a really good bedmate. She doesn’t steal the covers or anything, and she doesn’t complain about Tyler sleeping diagonally.

Josh and him don’t share beds anymore on tour because they don’t have to, but whenever they did, Tyler would get upset at Josh for pulling the duvet off them and kicking it to the floor, and Josh would get equally annoyed at Tyler for taking up the entire bed.

“It’s nice,” agrees Tyler.

“Do your parents know we live together?”

“Sort of.” Sort of means they know Tyler bought a house, that he’s not living with Josh any more, and that he’s engaged. (This is all they know.)

“So no,” says Jenna.

Tyler says, “I was going to tell them when they came to visit. They really like you, so I thought maybe they’d be more open to it if we were both there.”

“You’re not really giving them a choice.”

“They don’t really have one.”

Jenna looks surprised. “They're going to assume we’re sleeping together.”

“Do you want me to correct them?” Tyler will, if she does.

“I’m not sure.”

+

Living with Jenna is quiet in a way that living was Josh was not.

They move around each other more easily. Once Tyler adjusts to Jenna’s routine, he falls into patterns he hasn’t in ages.

Their producer called last week and told them they’d been invited to tour with two other bands—both of which were older and more popular than them—next September.

He has free time. He and Josh will do interviews and press releases during the week, but they’re not on tour. Josh is working mostly with Tyler, but he’s subbing in for another drummer in the area during the weekends.

Jenna wakes up before Tyler does to get to the college on time, and she comes back around four or five.

Tyler tries to make dinner before she comes home so she has something to look forward to, but with limited success, as he keeps managing to burn things.

She eventually tells him to give up.

“We can do it together,” she explains, after coming home one evening and watching Tyler drop a measuring cup of oil onto the floor.

She tells him about her day while helping Tyler learn the oven, gentle while they eat.

Tyler likes hearing about her students. She’s one of the youngest professors there, but she doesn’t like to brag, so Tyler always forgets until she talks about how hard it is to get students to listen to her in the first few weeks of the school year.

Now that it’s January, turning into February, she explains to Tyler that everyone’s adjusted. “I like teaching adults,” she says.

She’s careful not to wake him up when she gets out of bed in the morning, but she usually does so by accident anyway.

He usually goes over to Josh’s while she’s at work, or Josh will come over there. They do phone calls to radios at Tyler’s house because Josh claims Tyler’s got better Internet.

When they’re not traveling, or doing work, or meeting with executives, or separated by a five-minute walk, Josh will lie on the floor under the skylight and Tyler will watch him be bathed by the sun.

“Your hair looks even brighter than the sun you’re lying in,” says Tyler. Josh’s hair is highlighter yellow, matching the colors in his tattoo and bringing out weird undertones in his skin.

“That sounds like a really shitty song lyric,” says Josh. There’s dust floating above him.

+

Jenna’s gotten houseplants for the dining room table and for the front porch. Everything looks white and clean.

Josh says, “If you were anyone else, I would ask you right now if you wanted to end up somewhere other than suburbia. But I think for you, the answer would be no.”

“I think you’d be right,” says Tyler. It’s harder to tell now than it was a few years ago.

+

The first few months they live together, Tyler goes to church every Sunday with Jenna. When Josh is feeling particularly agreeable, he’ll let Jenna pick him up, and the three of them will go, although Tyler’s sure it’s not because Josh has had a recurrence of faith.

He just likes talking to Jenna—he never did this with Tyler when he used to ask.

By the time they reach spring, Jenna stops asking.

It’s not abrupt.

There have been a few times where Tyler isn’t able to go because of something, and once because he stayed over at Josh’s and both of them forgot to set an alarm.

She just stops. Tyler asks her if it’s okay once, a few weeks after they go to an Easter service—the first time Tyler’s been in a month—and she says she doesn’t mind.

“I don't know if I understand,” she says. “Because I know how important it was to you when we first met. But if you’re happier like this, I’m not going to say you need to go. You don’t.”

Tyler tries not to feel too guilty. He doesn’t know how to explain it, to shape words around a dwindling concept that used to be huge in his mind. He’s not sure, either.

She says, “Do you still believe in God?”

This catches Tyler off guard. It’s been awhile since Tyler’s thought about it.

He remembers, oddly and unexpectedly, talking to Josh like this, what Jenna’s saying to him now. He thinks they were watching a movie.

He remembers what Josh said, not the exact words. Tucked away in the back of his mind.

He can’t remember exactly what he asked him, but it was something like this. He wonders why.

He’s been busy, with Josh and believing in other things. It’s a mixture of this and lost time, but it’s not something he’s going to think about now.

“Yes,” says Tyler. It comes out more confident than he expected.

Tyler feels like his life is on fast-forward and he’s not sure when he’s supposed to hit the pause button. He tells Josh this while the two of them are sitting parked outside a grocery store, Josh behind the wheel.

Josh says, “Do you know which scene you’re looking for?”

“Something better. I feel frozen in time.”

“The tour’s coming, in a few months. At least this tour has a better name than the old one. It’s inspiring. Maybe we really will save rock and roll.”

Tyler ignores him. “I can't get out of bed in the mornings.”

“You’re sitting with me now,” says Josh, calm. They haven’t had a conversation like this since Tyler was living with Josh.

Josh waits for Tyler to answer, and when he doesn’t, he says, “Are you unhappy?”

“I don’t know. I think sometimes I miss living with you.” Tyler’s not sure if he’s supposed to say this or not.

The thing is, Tyler does.

He likes living with Jenna. She’s warm, and the way she talks and dresses and loves still makes Tyler want to immortalize her in writing.

Josh is—Josh.

Maybe Tyler’s just got to adjust his constants, shift his focus. Realign dependency, he thinks. But it’s been years.

One of Josh’s hands is still gripping the wheel. “You’ve got Jenna.” His voice is deceptively easy, airy as he looks at the front window and not at Tyler.

Tyler thinks he’s said something wrong, with the way Josh won’t look back.

“Josh,” he says, and Josh turns to him. Josh’s eyes look lighter when he faces the sun behind Tyler, wide and unblinking.

Tyler shifts so they’re as face-to-face as you can get in the front seat of a car. He can hear Josh’s breathing, watch his chest rise and fall.

Josh says, “What are you doing?” They’re close enough that Tyler can see where Josh cut himself shaving, just on the edge of his chin.

“I—” says Tyler. Nothing; he’s not doing anything. He takes his hands from where they were on the console between them.

Josh draws back, sharply.

“Sorry,” Tyler says, quiet. He’s not sure which part he’s apologizing for.

“Tyler,” sighs Josh, relaxing again into his seat, “You can talk to me. You can tell me anything, you know that, I just need you to… not make me feel like I’m responsible, or, that's not what I mean, I mean, stop making me the responsible one. I’m not the only one who’s here for you. You’ve got other people.”

“I know,” says Tyler. “It’s not your fault, it’s never been.”

Josh still looks upset, like he wants to say something and is holding himself back.

He drops Tyler off and Jenna asks him to stay for dinner. Tyler thinks Josh might talk less than usual, sitting at his side of the table and watching Tyler and Jenna discuss work and neighbors.

Tyler does not realize how incredibly uneventful their tours were until September of 2013.

Touring, he learns from the two oldest bands on their label, is an art form that is developed over a decade.

He asks Josh before they fly out, “Do you remember listening to some of these bands a few years ago?”

Josh says, “Yeah. On the radio and stuff, God.”

If they thought their fans were wild before, Tyler doesn’t know what he was thinking.

Their band hasn’t been around long enough to gather the five-year minimum, ride-or-die type following they see the first show. Tyler thinks some of the girls in the front are crying, and they don’t even know who he is. They’re the opener.

Confidence goes with experience.

Brendon Urie tries to see how many things he can get away with on stage before the audience begins to notice or he messes up a line; he’s got a friend keeping track backstage.

There’s an attitude that takes practice to cultivate, the assurance that no matter what you do, people are still going to love you like you’re religion. They can do anything they want onstage and no one will blink an eye. Pete Wentz tells him this, backstage, right before he tells Tyler that they’re going to pull a prank.

Tyler says, “Is that okay? During a show?”

Pete’s calmer and more approachable than Brendon, although not by much. He’s easier to talk to than Patrick Stump, who is small and funny but so confident he makes Tyler feel like he’s fifteen again even though Patrick seems to try his best not to.

Pete says, “Of course. People want to see stuff. Take risks, and all that. You know the advice, bad press is better than no press? Whoever said that was a fucking genius, Joseph.”

Tyler’s fairly sure this advice only applies to people who have already been famous and know they’re not going to lose it soon. “Oh,” he says.

“Come on,” says Pete. “Go get the drummer. He’ll want to do it.”

Pete definitely knows Josh’s name, but in the few weeks Tyler’s known him, he’s learned Pete has a flair for the dramatic.

He hopes Patrick intervenes at some point and tells Pete that not everybody wants their life to be an action movie. That seems like the kind of thing Pete and Patrick would talk about.

Josh takes to touring with them more easily than Tyler does because, as a general rule, people like Josh more than they like Tyler.

Josh walks into their dressing room and says, “Brendon Urie just taught me how to do a backflip.”

“Wow,” says Tyler. “We’ve made it so far. Show me.”

“I don’t know if I have another one in me,” says Josh. “I need to be jumping off something higher.”

Tyler learns how to portray himself and Josh in the way people want to see. There are very specific things people want when they watch an interview, and none of it has to do with the interviewer, unless the questions are unrealistically good.

It’s all in the way you react, and Josh and Tyler can make an interview go the way they want quickly. People still tell them they’re funny; Tyler knows they’re funny.

It’s in the way the interviewer will ask a boring, standard question that all the viewers already know the answer to, and Josh will make up a story, or Tyler will ignore the question and bring it back to Josh.

It’s a more subtle humor than the raucous shock that other bands manage to produce and portray in their own interviews, but it works.

They barely have to pretend like they’re other people. In hindsight, Tyler’s not sure how important being yourself is, as long as you trademark the effect.

Him and Josh, that’s all people want to hear about. Tyler guesses the music is just a plus, at this point.

Pete tells him the second people care more about your relationship with your bandmates than they do about your music, you’re going to be successful even if nothing you produce past that point has more than ten words, repeated.

Pete gives a lot of bad advice to him backstage, but this one might be true. Tyler thanks him for it whether it is or not.

+

The month is over quickly. Tyler doesn’t feel like a different person, but he does feel like he knows how to be in a band.

“I feel like we just came back from visiting wise elders who live on a mountain. The mountain happens to be kind of dirty, and has a lot of parties,” says Josh, as their plane lands.

Tyler nods. Then he says, “Are we commodifying emotion?”

Josh says, “Jesus, Tyler. Go back to sleep. Is that what you got out of this?”

“Does it matter if we do?” Tyler wants to know. He’s not sure how bad of a thing it is, he just wants to know.

“I don’t think it can,” Josh replies.

Jenna waits for them at the airport by baggage claim. She’s smiling big, glasses on in the early morning. Josh says, immediately upon seeing her, “My love!” and drops his suitcase. Tyler picks up both his and Josh’s suitcases and drags them to where Jenna is standing while Josh kisses her on the cheek with double the energy he had on the plane.

“Jenna,” says Tyler. “I missed you.”

She pulls herself out of Josh’s arms to kiss him hello. “You too,” she says. “You should see what I’ve done to our house.”

“Have you burned it down? Tell me no. That was my job.”

“Even better. I got pictures of house plants to match our actual house plants.”

“Wait,” says Tyler. “Don’t spoil it. I want to be surprised.” She laughs affectionately, takes his hand in her own so their fingers tangle up, and walks them both to the car, Josh on her other side.

+

The only discernible difference at first between before and after September is that now, Tyler has Pete Wentz on his contacts list.

The tour gives them exposure like nothing else did. They've got more fans, enough so that Tyler’s been recognized now. Usually only when he’s in the city, but he’s been stopped and asked to take photographs with people.

The fans are nice, polite, and nervous. Tyler’s grateful no one’s cried yet; he’s not sure how he’d deal with that, but he feels like it’s coming. He’ll ask Patrick.

Tyler’s tired of touring. The shows are fine, he’s adjusted, but the interviews are starting to get too intense. There’s a lot of pressure of them—self-imposed, sure—to say the right thing. Their label wants them to do a headlining world tour starting in May of next year. He’s not sure if they even have enough fans for it.

Josh wants to see Europe. “I’ve never been,” he tells Tyler. They’ve just gotten back from a local show they promised to perform at.

Tyler’s shirt is sticking to him even though it’s cold outside. He’s pulling at it in the mirror while Josh sits on his bed and waits.

“It’s so long,” says Tyler. The proposed tour length is about eight months (with breaks), and he’s heard horror stories about world tours. They sound exhausting.

He doesn’t like time zones, as a concept.

“I hate stage clothing,” says Josh. “I think we should start wearing puffy jackets. No one wants to see sweat drip down my arms. It’s gross. Can we email the label and ask them if we can wear jackets on stage? Or masks, or something?”

“You can do that,” says Tyler. “Make sure you just sign it just with your name, though.”

Josh stretches so he’s starfished across the bed. “You never want to have any fun. I think masks would bring a new element to the show. It would be Halloween, on stage, all the time.”

Tyler throws his shirt across the room into a corner. “Who wouldn’t want that?”

Both of them look up when they hear the door open. “We’re in here,” calls Tyler. Jenna’s home late, she must have had an extra meeting.

They watch her take in the scene, and Josh starts laughing before Tyler even knows what she’s thinking.

Jenna snorts. “You both look ridiculous.” Tyler’s hair is all over the place, he’s still sweaty, and now he has his shirt off. Josh is lying all over their bed.

“Tyler over here is a hot mess,” says Josh. “It’s because I’m a gifted lover.”

Jenna laughs, loud and surprised. “Obviously,” she agrees, crouching down to pick up Tyler’s shirt from the corner. “Did you guys just come back from the show?”

Tyler nods.

“I’ll kick myself out so you two can eat dinner, or whatever it is you do when I’m not here,” says Josh.

The door clicks behind him loudly when he leaves.

Christmas is a festive thing. Jenna, Tyler, and Josh set up a Christmas tree in Tyler’s house, and then drive to Josh’s immediately after and set up one there.

Jenna wants to go to her parent’s house this year, and Tyler doesn’t mind. Her parents always have good decorations, and her mother is a better cook than both of them combined. Josh goes to his own an hour up north.

There’s snow on the ground in January, remnants of the New Year.

Tyler’s gotten really into making seasonal food over the holidays. He gets sick if he eats too much of it, so he’s been giving it to his neighbors. As a result, he has neighbors who like him for the first time.

“Tyler,” Jenna says. “I think maybe we should talk about something.”

Jenna sounds kind of serious, sitting on a stool with her legs crossed and watching him put bread into the oven.

“Sure,” says Tyler. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she says. “I wasn’t sure when I should bring it up or not, but at some point, I am interested in getting legally married. With a priest, and everything. White dress, all that.”

She’s right; they haven’t really talked about it. Tyler wasn’t sure when it would happen.

“When were you thinking?” asks Tyler. “I’d like to soon, as well, but it’s hard to find time, and I know because I googled it once that it takes at least three months to plan a wedding. And that’s not a very good one. I want to be home when you do it too, and Josh and I have got a tour for like, eight months soon—”

“So it would probably work best if we did it next year,” she finishes.

“Yeah,” agrees Tyler. “I wish we could do it sooner.”

“Me too,” she says. “And, um, that sort of brings me to my next point.” She looks distinctly uncomfortable.

“Tyler, we haven’t slept together. Well—” she corrects herself, “We’ve slept together plenty. We haven’t had sex.”

Tyler freezes. “Do you want to?”

She looks distraught. “I’d like to at some point, yes. I didn’t know you were so adamant on waiting once we got together.”

“I mean,” says Tyler, “I expected to.” He’s not quite against the idea of sleeping with her. He just hasn’t considered it.

Or, he is against it. It’s better to wait for them, maybe. He tells her so.

She says, “When did you get so morally upstanding, Tyler? You don’t even go to church anymore.”

Tyler’s eyes widen, because he wasn’t expecting her to get upset about it, but he says, “I go on holidays.”

“So does seventy percent of the American population. I don’t think you get to pick and choose what you want to follow. I’m not sure I understand why you’re avoiding it.”

Tyler says, “We should set a wedding date.”

“Will you sleep with me after we get married?” Jenna asks it matter-of-factly.

He feels his cheeks heat up; he doesn’t want to be self-conscious about something that they should be doing anyways.

He should say they could do it now; he knows it’s not ethics. Something about it—he doesn’t quite know how to put it into words, it’s—he loves her, she’s so beautiful, he’s sure she’d be beautiful like this with him. He wants her in an abstract way, an artistic one, where they talk about their days while they cook dinner and they watch the neighbor’s kids play in the lawn.

Intellectually, he knows he should want to sleep with her. Sex is a flaw in this specific picture of his life he has painted in his head that he didn’t see until right now as she’s standing in front of him asking him what he thinks he’s doing.

Thinking about it is like taking a magnifying glass and seeing the blurry messy shapes of the trees, the places where the artist made a mistake but you can’t tell until you really look.

His thinks irrationally that he needs to stop comparing Jenna to paintings; this is what he gets for proposing in an art gallery.

“Of course,” he says. He knows he’s not looking at her. He’ll do it once they get married. The months they have on tour will give him time to think, get adjusted.

Jenna sighs. “We've been engaged for months. I figured you were just too polite. You only sometimes make sense to me,” she says.

“We can get married right when I get back,” says Tyler.

“Yeah,” she agrees. She seems hesitant. “You’re lucky I like you so much.”

Tyler leans in close and kisses her. “It’ll be better when we actually do if we wait,” he says. She’s surprised, at first, but then she smiles against his mouth.

“If that’s what you really want,” she’s said, once they’ve parted.

+

“This tour has a much better name,” says Josh. “I think we’ve done a good job.”

“Than Rock and Roll, or than our other ones?”

“Hm. Mostly just our other ones.”

Josh is right.

It's May. They fly to Arizona first, cross-country. They're sitting at the airport, not meeting the rest of the crew until they get there.

A voice tells them the plane’s boarding in twenty minutes.

“I can’t believe we actually got masks,” says Josh.

It was one of the weirdest meetings of Tyler’s life.

“You know,” Josh continues, “I sort of thought the guys from Fall Out Boy were exaggerating when they talked about how much labels want to set brands for music. The people seemed really excited when I talked about masks, though. Will we have to wear masks for the rest of our careers? Are people going to relate more to masked versions of us?”

Josh looks kind of worried, then he says, “I guess it wouldn’t be so bad, though. They’ve got mouth-holes. Also, we don’t have to wear them for the entire show.”

Tyler feels kind of horrified. “They’ve got to have mouth-holes. Did you check?”

“Yes! I tried yours on!”

He tells Josh he hopes they don’t look like idiots.

“I think,” says Josh, “That if this tour goes the way everyone wants, it won’t matter how dumb we look onstage.”

“Um,” says Tyler. “I’m not sure how true that is.”

Josh waves his hand in the air. “It’ll work out! We’re already way more popular than we ever thought we’d be.”

In London, Josh tries to eat fish and chips from as many restaurants as he possibly can and then ranks them on a scale for Tyler.

“This is to make up the fact that we never ended up doing it for vegetables,” explains Josh, after he comes back to their hotel room with three bags, all from different restaurants.

Tyler grins and looks up. “Would you have even eaten them, if we had done that?”

“Of course!” Josh exclaims. “I’m always willing to make sacrifices for the good of the scientific community. You of all people should know that.” He shakes his head like Tyler’s being ludicrous.

Tyler loves London. Josh says it ruins his hair.

It rains and he doesn’t see the sun once while he’s there, but he can read all the signs and from their hotel room he can watch people with umbrellas walk the streets like ants. He tells Josh it makes him feel like he’s a seventeenth century poet, just to see Josh laugh at him.

He writes.

“Sit with me while I try to think of words that rhyme with age,” says Tyler, once Josh puts the bags down. He’s holding some sort of drink.

Tyler says, “Did you bring me one?”

“This one’s for you.” Josh sets it on the bed stand and sits leaned against the headboard.

“Are you writing about me?” Josh asks. “I feel like at least three songs on the album should be about me. You don’t really know that many people. Seriously limited options, you know.”

“I know a lot of people,” argues Tyler. “I could write a song about every single member of my extended family. Or I could write a song about Michael, the estranged manager, who you so unceremoniously kicked out.”

“Is this song about your love for Michael?” Josh is peering over Tyler’s shoulder.

“No,” says Tyler, honest. “This one’s about you. Don’t read it yet, I’m not done.”

“You invited me over here to not show me anything? This better be a really good song. I’ll hear it in a few months, anyways.” Josh sinks down onto the bed so he’s lying down, body curled into a parenthesis towards Tyler.

He falls asleep next to him, hair spread out on the pillow, knees slightly curled up to his chest.

He’s got dark circles under his eyes that Tyler can’t name the color of, bruised-looking. Tyler abruptly wants to touch them, and it’s an off-putting feeling, wanting to see what they would feel like under his fingers.

There’s a few days stubble on his cheeks. When Josh wakes up, Tyler will tell him to shave it before they go to the interview.

They get breaks.

They go back home a few times, and Jenna’s so jealous and so happy to see them. Tyler tries to look for things she might like.

She tends to politely despise any art and decoration he brings back, but he keeps trying anyways.

None of their houseplants are dead, although they do have more than Tyler remembers.

He does have a surreal experience where he drives to Josh’s and finds not Josh, but someone who is presumably Josh’s roommate, sitting at the table.

“Are you his roommate? Or are you robbing him?” Tyler doesn’t even get past the entrance.

Josh’s roommate is eating cereal out of a mug. “Hello,” he says. He’s wearing pajamas, even though it’s four in the afternoon.

“What are you doing here?” Tyler watches him flip the page of the newspaper and spill cereal on the table instead of answering. “Where's Josh?”

“Hello,” the roommate says again, after a second, like Tyler didn’t answer him the first time. “I’m Mark, and I live here.”

“Have you always lived here?”

Mark looks kind of annoyed. “Yes. I just don’t stay here that often.”

Tyler says, “I lived here for a year and I never saw you once. Where did you even go?”

“Is it even important?” Mark is still trying to turn the page of a newspaper one-handed. “Why are you so upset about this?”

Then Mark pauses and says, “Josh had another roommate? He didn’t tell me.”

“What? No. I just lived here. Why would he even need to tell you?”

“You weren’t his roommate, but you lived here.” Mark is skeptical. “Were you paying rent? I should have been paying a third, then, not half.”

“No—“ says Tyler, getting frustrated. “Not technically. It was long-term sleeping on the couch.”

“You ruined the couch,” says Mark.

“I thought you were made-up,” says Tyler. This is probably what people feel like when they think they see the Loch Ness Monster.

Mark looks pitying.

“Oh, wait,” he says. “You’re Tyler. Maybe Josh did tell me about you before twenty minutes ago. Look, I don’t really care that you and Josh were dating, you still spent a free year here, and you still ruined the couch. There are no exceptions in splitting rent.” Mark sounds very firm. “To answer your question, Josh will be here in a minute. He told me to tell you to just sit still, and that you wouldn’t be late to catch your flight.”

“We’re not dating, we’re in a band.”

“Oh, sorry,” says Mark. “I didn’t really pay attention.”

Josh walks in at that exact second. “Sorry,” he says, stressed. “I’m ready to go, I just had to drop something off at one of my friend’s houses.”

“Your boyfriend owes us money for the couch,” announces Mark. “I won’t make him supplement the rent for last year, but either you or him has got to pay for the couch.”

“If I was his boyfriend, I wouldn't have slept on the couch!” Tyler bursts out. “You don’t even use it!” He’s not sure if he should be defending himself or Josh’s rent money, so he tries to hit both targets.

Mark seems unimpressed.

Josh looks pained. “I left for half an hour,” he says.

By the time Josh manages to convince Mark that yes, he’ll pay the couch money, they’re far on their way to being late.

As Josh drives them, Tyler says, “You have a terrible roommate.”

“He’s not so bad once you get to know him,” says Josh.

Jet lag is going to kill Tyler, and then he’s going to come back from the dead, and then it’s going to kill him again.

Josh’s face tells him he’s being overdramatic, but he looks too exhausted to say it out loud.

They're in Japan, and it’s beautiful, and the city lights are giving Tyler a headache. Everything is neon here and Tyler can’t read it, the two of them watching Tokyo speed by pressed together in a cab while their driver desperately tries to find somewhere to park.

“We can't even park, and we’re the main attraction,” says Tyler. Josh’s head is resting on his shoulder.

“Hmm,” says Josh, into Tyler’s sleeve.

“Don’t fall asleep on your drum kit, or anything,” says Tyler. He doesn’t think Josh is listening.

Josh somehow manages to take short naps absolutely anywhere on the ground, but the minute someone tells him he has to get an actual night of sleep, he can’t do it.

He watched four movies on the flight over here while Tyler was sleeping, and then when Tyler woke up, proceeded to draw a bunch of incredibly poor caricatures of the people sitting near them on the plane while Tyler whispered at him to stop.

Josh had said, “You can’t even tell who they’re of unless I tell you. I only know because I’m the one drawing, nobody’s going to pick up on it.” Tyler’s still confident the man sitting next to them in the aisle knew exactly what they were doing.

Because Josh manages to fall asleep during the thirty minutes it takes to find a place where the driver can let them out, and because Tyler forgets his credit card in the hotel room, it takes them even longer to exit the taxi.

“Wake up,” says Tyler. He digs his chin into the top of Josh’s head. “You have to pay.”

“Am I dead?” Josh’s voice is slow and sleepy.

“I need your wallet,” says Tyler. Josh makes no move towards it, just rubs his face against Tyler’s shirt in an effort to wake himself up, so Tyler reaches behind Josh and takes it out himself.

Josh says, “The number of times I’ve been violated in a taxi cab by you,” and then trails off.

Thanking the driver quickly, Tyler pulls Josh out of the cab. “Maybe they’ll have energy drinks inside,” he says hopefully. Josh leans on him. “I haven’t slept in like, forty hours, Tyler.”

“You have all the time in the world after. Go put on your mask; no one’s going to be able to tell.”

They’re followed back to their hotel for the first time by a small group of fans in Seattle, of all places. They don’t notice until they get out of the car and see them. They’ve run from the venue, able to keep up because of the heavy traffic.

Tyler says, “I didn’t know we were famous enough for this yet,” but maybe he did. He thinks he saw a girl cry in the front row yesterday. It can be hard to see with the stage lights.

In an interview, Tyler says the masks are for attention. “We’re trying to be a little more faceless,” he says. This is partially true. They didn’t start out that way, but he’s sure he would get an angry text if he said they started out as a Halloween joke.

The masks have lost their humor now, and they don't even wear them for the whole time. In certain photo shoots, when they’re asked.

He says the cloth makes them more faceless for the relatable factor, but really, he likes the separation. Josh, he thinks, likes it more and more. People can only ask the same eight life questions about you before the audience gets bored, and then they have to dig up stuff that you barely remember doing.

They spend four days in Texas, in the end.

Into the darkness of a hotel room, Tyler says, “I feel like there’s no one else in the world but us.”

Josh counters, “I think there are some people who would disagree with that.”

They’ve pushed their beds together slightly so Tyler can lie over both ends and face the television, which is in the corner of the room.

The TV isn’t even turned on to a channel anymore; it’s just a dark blue screen that’s starting to make Tyler’s retinas burn.

The window is open, but the curtains are shut, and they wave whenever the wind blows. Deserts are too quiet.

“Different lights make your hair look different colors,” says Tyler, staring at Josh. Josh is lying on his back with his arms crossed over his chest, eyes shut to the ceiling.

He opens his eyes halfway. “I don’t really know what to say to that.”

Tyler pushes himself up on his elbows so he can look down at Josh. “No, see, it’s kind of blue now in this light, not pink,” says Tyler.

“I can change it through sheer willpower,” says Josh, and closes his eyes again.

Tyler says, “Can I,” and reaches over and runs his fingers through it. It’s soft, probably because Josh hasn’t had time to wash it in a while.

Carding his hands through it, he sees where dark brown has started to replace pink at the roots. “What color is it going to be next?”

Tyler lets his nails scrape back from Josh’s hairline.

Josh says, lazy, “What?”

“What color?” Tyler lets out a soft breath of laughter.

“Oh,” says Josh. “Blue for real, this time.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He whispers it, wavering, into the darkness.

The whites of Josh’s eyes look over-bright when he looks up at Tyler. “I don’t know what you’d do, either,” he says, mouth quirked.

“No,” says Tyler, because Josh has to know. Tyler wants to tell him in this moment, unremarkable in its repetitive atmosphere, when they’ve been here a thousand times, when they haven’t seen anyone but each other in months. “I don't think—sometimes I don’t have anyone else.”

Josh says, “You always have someone else.”

“Not like this.”

“I think maybe,” Josh whispers, gentle like he’s softening a blow, “That’s not always a good thing.”

Tyler doesn’t know how to explain it, the way he feels, the way Josh gets under his skin and stays there. It’s the tour. It’s the way Josh looks now, staring up at him, arms still folded across his chest.

Maybe Josh is right, but Tyler doesn’t know what to do about it. He doesn’t say anything back, just breathes.

Huffing, breaking the silence, Josh says, “Turn off the TV, I’m trying to fall asleep and the light’s annoying me.”

Moving away, Tyler flicks the button on the remote and turns it off.

+

Josh calls him a week after they get back in October and tells Tyler he’s moving to LA.

Tyler’s perfectly aware there’s a reason Josh didn’t tell him in person, or over dinner with Jenna last night.

He’s irritated in the way Josh probably knew he would be because he doesn’t understand, bites his nails when Josh tells him over the phone.

“Tyler,” he says, and he’s probably rehearsed this because he knows it’s going to piss Tyler off. “I got an offer while we were on tour to go down to L.A and do some work in the recording studio as a substitute for some other bands. They have trouble finding percussionists, and they know we’re not doing anything for a while since we just got off.”

“Did you take it?” asks Tyler. He just wants to hear him say it. They’re not doing anything right now, but they could be, and now Josh is leaving.

“Yes. It was a good opportunity. It’s not permanent, obviously. Just for a few months. I have friends down there, too. I’m still keeping the house here and everything.” Josh laughs slightly. “Mark would kill me if I ditched without paying.”

He’s upset, now, moving from annoyance to anger to a feeling that makes his muscles curl up in what he knows is an irrational way. He’s seen Josh every day for almost the past year, and the years before that, and they work together.

“You don’t get to do this,” says Tyler, and he stumbles over the words a little when he wanted them to sound sharp and clear.

“Come on, it’s probably good for us, anyways; we’ve seen so much of each other. It’ll be a quick break. You and Jenna will finally get to spend time without me intruding.”

Tyler says, “You haven’t been intruding.”

“I’m not quite sure that’s true. But that’s not the point, Tyler. I want to do this. We don’t have to do everything together.”

“We just did,” Tyler points out.

“Yes, exactly,” says Josh. “So it should be fine to take a break.”

“Okay,” says Tyler. He can’t say anything else. “When are you going?”

He can hear Josh moving around through the phone. Tyler wonders if he’s packing while he talks. “I’m flying out tomorrow morning. You can come over if you want, though.”

He nods, then realizes Josh can’t see him, so he says, “Yeah, I’ll be over in a minute,” and hangs up.

Tyler is aware that this is not a big deal, and should not be a big deal. It feels like it is anyway. He’s being dramatic, but he thinks it as he stares blankly at the phone and touches the car keys in his pocket. A bit like there are parts of him separated from his body watching him do this.

He says, loudly, “I’m going over to Josh’s, I’ll be back in a minute,” just in case Jenna’s home right now.

Driving to Josh’s house doesn’t take very long. He does it thoughtlessly, tires over asphalt, forgetting it immediately once he opens Josh’s door. He thinks, stupidly, that Josh should start locking it.

Josh is in his room, the door wide open. He looks up when Tyler comes in, smiles.

“Why are you moving?” Tyler feels twitchy in his skin, hands shaky. He desperately wants to be angrier than he is, wants to feel that first rush of frustration he felt at the start when Josh told him.

Josh is pulling clothing out of his drawers and attempting to fold them when Tyler walks in.

“Hello.” He gives Tyler a once-over. Tyler thinks Josh might make fun of him for freaking out, he knows it’s obvious the way his hands are clenched into fists in his pockets, they ways he’s breathing harder than he ought to.

“It’s not permanent,” Josh says, before Tyler can say anything else. “I was just invited to do work down there for a bit, and we don’t have anything right now, I told you. You wrote most of the album on tour, so I don’t have to be here. You can come down later to record.”

Tyler says, “Is this because of me?” He sounds strained, the words pushing at his throat. He can take a step back, give Josh space.

“Not everything is because of you, Tyler.” Josh’s voice is steady. “Like I said on the phone, I think a few months would be good, though. Visit whenever you’d like. It's not like—it’s not like we never go without seeing each other.”

Tyler feels sick and childish. It’s like three years ago again, when he still lived in his apartment and used to pretend he could write alone, and absolutely nothing has changed, except maybe it’s worse.

He thought he was over dependency. If he was, even a little, he’s not anymore. It feels worse than it did over the phone with Josh in front of him now, still telling him the same thing.

“Coming off of a tour with you is like coming off a high. That was an eight month high,” Josh is saying, softer now.

Tyler says, raw, “I’ll do better. We don’t have to be together as much, after this one.” They've never talked about their friendship in this way before, like it’s something that’s gone a little off the rails that they need to fix.

“If you keep doing this, it’s going to ruin the band. Two people can’t function like this and still have other people in their lives, it’s unhealthy.”

Tyler thinks, _what other people?_

“What do you mean, this?” he says, frantically.

“We just have to take a step back. If I stay here, I think… I don’t think anything we could do would work out. I think maybe it would, at first, and then it would fall apart. Distance.”

Some part of Tyler’s brain knows what Josh is saying. Codependency is bad, maybe. Especially if you haven’t had to deal with it in a while. The rest of his brain feels like white noise.

“I don’t want distance.”

He’s standing in Josh’s room next to the dresser. Josh has stopped packing and is looking up at him, kneeling next to a stack of jeans and sweatshirts.

He crouches next to Josh.

He doesn’t think Josh is crying, but his eyes are red. He looks guilty, somehow.

Tyler folds so he’s sitting on his knees, knocking over the clothing into a pile. He reaches for Josh’s wrist like he’s been drawn in by gravity, hand closing tight.

Josh looks at Tyler’s hand and his wrist like he doesn’t know what he’s seeing. He’s whispering, “I’m going to see you soon. This wasn’t meant to be a big deal, I wish you’d—” He cuts himself off.

Tyler watches him say it, doesn’t believe it.

“Tyler,” he says again, and touches Tyler’s jaw just under the ear with one of his hands, leans in and brushes his lips over Tyler’s cheekbone so lightly he can’t feel it, leaves them there. He opens his mouth to say something else, then doesn’t.

Tyler shuts his eyes against it, feels his wet lashes pressed to Josh’s face. Tilting his head so his lips are touching the corner of Josh’s mouth, he says, “It’s not for long, right?”

Josh stills, lets him.

“No, I told you, I just need time. Visit me. Fly down next week and visit me, I don’t care. Just a few months, and you can be there for some of it.”

“Okay,” says Tyler. He’s still holding onto Josh’s wrist, speaking against the edge of Josh’s mouth. Josh says, “Could you let go.”

Tyler releases Josh’s wrist. He watches himself leave white fingerprints on the skin. “Sorry,” he mutters, moving away.

“It's fine,” says Josh. “I’ll text you when I land. You can stay here while I pack, but you don’t have to.”

“I think I’m going to go,” says Tyler. They’re both still kneeling on the floor. “I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah,” says Josh.

Tyler drives back home about an hour before Jenna gets back. She walks in and he’s sitting at the table, trying to remember if Josh had given him an address for where he’d be staying.

He says, “Did you know Josh was leaving?” He still feels off-balance.

Jenna says, “No. Is he moving? I'm not sure I understand.” Then, “Tyler, are you alright?” She looks worried, staring at him, still standing.

Jenna’s here, she’s here and she’s not leaving, she’ll understand.

Tyler sits up straighter and runs his hands through his hair. “I’m fine, yeah. He’s not moving, he’s just leaving for a few months, and he didn’t tell me. He’s flying out tomorrow.”

“You’ll see him soon,” says Jenna. She’s watching Tyler carefully. “I’m sorry he didn’t tell you, but if it’s only for a few months, it shouldn’t be so bad. He should have told you. It might have been a last-minute decision, though.”

“He must have forgotten that I actually need him in order to produce music past lyrics,” Tyler explains, “As we’re in the same band.” He sounds angry, his voice escalating. He’s not upset at Jenna.

“Do you ever think,” she says, “And I’m not… accusing you of anything, I’m just wondering—that maybe you two are a little over-reliant on each other?”

Tyler thinks she means, aren’t you a little reliant on him.

“What? No. I mean, we have to spend a lot of time together. I need him for this part, though, we’ve got to record. We promised the label we could have an album out in the spring next year.”

She says, “Alright. Are you going to go down and record with him, then?”

“Yes.”

“So it won’t even be for that many months, then.” She looks oddly withdrawn.

“No,” agrees Tyler. “No, I guess not.”

+

Tyler says, “You're going to be across the country when we release the album.”

He calls Josh a week after he lands.

Josh says, “No I’m not, not if it’s coming out in May. I’ll be back before then. I’ll probably be back by March.”

“Oh,” says Tyler.

“Are you still pissed at me?”

Josh can tell over the phone, 2000 miles away, when Tyler’s only said twelve words.

“No,” Tyler lies.

Josh says, “Neither of us believe that. Anyways, when you forgive me and find a hobby other than not responding to my text messages, you can stay with me while we record.”

“Thanks,” says Tyler, who had assumed he would be doing this anyway, and definitely would not have asked.

They have enough music to release a new one, too. Tyler wrote more than he ever has on their last tour, and a lot of the songs are salvageable. They’re not as good as his older stuff, but they’re going to sound better. They’ve got more repetition, faster parts. The label’s going to like them.

“I’ve got to come down in a few weeks and record the first single,” says Tyler. “We’ve also got an interview, or something. I can’t remember who it’s with.”

“I can never remember.” Josh sounds crackly over the phone. Tyler wants to hear his voice, clear.

+

Tyler manages; it’s not so hard.

He only accidentally drives to Josh’s house once on the way home from dropping Jenna off at a friend’s, and then he stops.

Josh calls him almost every day once Tyler stops being mad and just starts missing him, tells him about his work. He says, “I hope you’re not doing anything incredibly wild without me.” He always says hi to Jenna.

With the time difference, Tyler keeps falling asleep over Skype, much to Josh’s aggravation. Josh says, “Am I not exciting enough for you?”

“Your voice is calming,” says Tyler. “It sounds better when I shut my eyes, and when I do, I just end up falling asleep.”

Josh manages to look disbelieving, even though the connection is making him blurry.

Tyler cleans up the rest of the songs and drafts the order. He can’t write music that’s not words very well, but he knows mostly what he wants each song to sound like.

Jenna’s a surprising amount of help. She lets him test out different rhythms with her in the evening and tells him which one’s she’d listen to.

“We’ve got to make sure the general population is going to like it,” says Tyler, smiling.

“Am I the best representation of the general population?” asks Jenna, offended. “Am I at least above average, if we’re calling me the general population?”

“You’re all I’ve got!” Tyler lays down the pens he was using to imitate drums. “You’ll have to do. I guess you’re slightly above average,” he says. “But only slightly.”

Jenna says, “I wish Josh were here to suffer through this so I wouldn’t have to.”

“I could always ask my brothers, I guess.”

“Your brothers have terrible taste in music.” Jenna is in sweatpants and one of Tyler’s old t-shirts, long legs dangling off one end of the couch while she listens to Tyler tap on the table.

He can’t really argue.

She says, “I was thinking April.”

“What’s happening in April?”

“Nothing important. A wedding, if you’re interested. It’s not a big deal.”

Laughing, Tyler says, “Who could the two people getting married possibly be?

“You know,” says Jenna, “I’m really not sure anymore. I can’t remember anyone getting engaged recently.”

“I know,” Tyler agrees. “I’m terrible.”

He comes up behind the couch and pushes Jenna’s glasses down her nose so they fall off entirely, listening to her laugh and grabbing her wrist when she tries to swat at his hand.

He brings her hand up to his face and examines the ring. “By God,” he says, mouth open in shock, “Are you getting married? I can’t believe you never told me. This sure is a beautiful one, though. Whoever got this for you has great taste.”

“His taste is only okay,” says Jenna, “But thank you for your compliment, sir.” She giggles when Tyler twists it around her finger.

“April, though,” he says, more seriously. “Let me check my non-existent schedule.” He looks at his watch.

“I think we're all clear for April.” He sits next to her on the couch, letting her put her head in his lap.

She asks, “Can our color scheme be blue?”

“Anything but pink,” he reasons. “My brothers cannot pull that color off if we make them wear ties.”

“They're going to have to wear ties,” Jenna says.

“Do I have to wear a tie? I don’t like the way they make my throat feel.”

Jenna rolls her eyes. “I can't believe I’m marrying you.”

+

Josh picks him up at the airport in January. It’s been about a month since Tyler has seen him, and after the first week or so, Tyler called him enough that Jenna started complaining about the phone bills she was having to sort through to get to her actual, important mail.

He’s waiting by baggage claim, wearing old jeans and a sweatshirt even though it’s not even that cold outside. His hair’s a different color.

Tyler’s seen him over Skype and over FaceTime, but Josh is always going to look better in person.

Walking over, Tyler sets his bag down. Josh says, “I missed you.”

He looks good, God. Tyler says, “Yeah. I like the hair. It looks terrible.”

“You haven’t seen me in a month, and that’s all you have to say? Unbelievable.” He’s grinning, and looks relieved for some reason Tyler can’t place. “I knew you would hate it.”

Then Josh crosses the space between them and hugs him tight, arms wrapped around Tyler waist, chin over Tyler’s shoulder.

He’s warm where he fits against Tyler, and he smells like him, and Josh says, “Jesus, Tyler, did you forget how to hug back,” so Tyler curls his hands around the back of Josh’s shirt and breathes deep.

When they part, and Tyler’s taken his hands off Josh’s back and carefully not pulled him closer, Tyler says, “Is that my sweatshirt?”

“Well, you know,” Josh says, confidentially, “I don’t think you can be quite sure of anything.”

Tyler says, “I can’t believe I wanted you to move back for a while.”

Josh lives in an apartment above a coffee shop, about five minutes from the recording studio.

“I thought you said you were staying with friends?” Tyler’s looking around Josh’s place. It’s small, but the view is nice.

“It turns out I don’t like living with other people that much,” says Josh. “Well, them in particular. I got my own place, and the money wasn’t an issue. It’s closer anyways.”

Josh has the same type of houseplant next to the window that Tyler has at home. “I like it.”

The windows let light spread all over the apartment, blinding Tyler when he wakes up, making him pull the blankets up over his eyes.

It's a one-bedroom apartment, and Josh gives him the couch. It doesn’t fold out like the couch Josh has at his house, and Tyler nearly falls off several times because it’s not long enough for him.

“Look, Tyler,” says Josh, when he finds Tyler on the floor, “I would offer to share the bed with you, but quite frankly, you take up so much room, and I’m just not feeling that charitable.”

Tyler says, “Thanks. Your theoretical charity makes my heart swell.”

The single records easily, and Josh learns his parts quickly. He shows Tyler around LA for the few days that he’s there.

They fall asleep early and wake up late. Half of the days, Josh falls asleep next to him on the couch, and when Tyler wakes up, he’s back in his room.

In some ways, it reminds Tyler of living with Josh, but as if Josh were a slightly different person. He feels like he’s drifted slightly, or maybe regressed, to a version Tyler hasn’t seen in years.

Back to when they first met, when Josh was so cautious.

+

They have four interviews in a row, and then none at all. Stations will record them and then use them weeks, even months later.

People know about Jenna now, just about her in theory, and now they want to know the rest of her.

Journalists keep asking Tyler how they met, how long they knew each other, when the wedding is going to be.

Jenna doesn’t want to be famous. She’s okay with people recognizing her, but there’s no way she’d want anyone knowing where she worked, so Tyler tells everyone he met her through a friend, and that they’re going to have a spring wedding.

When they ask Josh if he’s got a girlfriend, Josh usually jokes that he’s marrying Jenna with Tyler.

“Part of the package,” he explains. The fans love it.

They get recognized in LA more than they do anywhere else. Tyler has a group of seven girls come up to him on the street once, and they’re overwhelmed and overwhelming. He’s getting better at talking with the fans, in his personal opinion, although Josh keeps telling him he looks pained whenever he gets asked to sign an autograph.

“I sign a lot of autographs,” he complains.

Josh says, “You could at least pretend to have a real smile when they ask for a picture.”

It’s not that Tyler doesn’t like them, because they’re the reason he gets to produce music and make real money off it. It’s just that after a while they get to be all the same.

“I want to meet your friends,” says Tyler, on the sixth and final day, as Josh is driving him back to the airport.

Josh says, “It’s a bit late for that. Meet them when you come down next month to record the rest of the album. I’m not sure if you’ll like them.”

Tyler shrugs. “They can’t be that bad.”

Josh hugs him again right before he goes through security. “Text me when you land,” he says.

There’s a twisting feeling in Tyler’s blood that he hates, that self-awareness that he’s going to deal with this poorly again. He feels like a dog, or something. Separation anxiety. Josh would laugh, he should tell him.

He understands it; there’s just nothing he can do about it.

Tyler watches him leave the security line.

+

Jenna says, “How was Josh?”

“He’s good, yeah. I’ve got to go down again to record the rest of the album in February. I think we’re performing on a TV show, too.”

Jenna’s making dinner when he gets back.

“I talked about you in a bunch of interviews,” he adds.

She seems pleased. “I should watch them.”

“You don’t watch them already?”

“Well,” she hesitates, “There are kind of a lot. It’s hard to keep up. And, as you don’t experience this you wouldn’t know, but it’s very surreal to watch you perform or talk to a large group of people. Both of you, actually, but mostly you. You look… unnatural.”

“Josh tells me the same thing,” says Tyler. “Not about shows, but interviews.”

She says, “You and Josh act differently in interviews, too. I don’t know how to explain it. The way you play off each other, it’s practiced, but I don’t think anyone’s going to pick up on it unless they know you personally. You guys don’t do that as much in real life.”

Tyler knows this because they didn’t learn how to do it really well until a few years ago. “And the rest of the time?” He wants to know what they look like off-screen, where he can’t see himself.

“Watching you guys talk to each other is like watching TV with the sound off, closed-captioning on, and the highest fast-forward speed pressed so you can only read some of the words.”

“That’s really specific,” says Tyler, a little taken aback. He’s not sure how much sense it makes.

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it,” she says, point-blank.

+

Tyler visits LA a total of two times, and in the space between the first and the second, he and Josh don’t talk as much. Josh is overly busy, and he’s making friends there who aren’t Tyler.

Tyler’s bored, itchy in his own skin.

He goes to church again twice, quits, tries to write, fails miserably and predictably, and at one point tries to take up painting. He also accidentally kills a bunch of their garden plants when he tries to prune them.

This is all in the span of about four weeks.

Jenna says, “Tyler, please, you need a hobby.”

Tyler says, “I can’t write. I don’t know what to write about. Also, I’m terrible at painting. You were the one who told me that.”

“Yes.” Jenna doesn’t look very sympathetic. “Please don’t paint anymore.”

He still feels lost, and it’s partly Josh, but it’s partly just him.

When Josh meets him at the airport this time Tyler feels relief like a wave. Josh says, “You again,” and Tyler just stares back for a moment before telling Josh his hair looks even worse.

They work more this time around, but they also have more time. They manage to record the album and set the release for May.

Josh says, “Wait, are you going to be married before the release?”

Tyler says, “Yeah, I think so.”

“You think so.”

“Yes, yeah, we’re sending out the invitations when I get back.”

“Releasing an album as a married man,” Josh states. “I hope Jenna chose a good theme.”

They’re waiting to meet Josh’s friends at a bar.

Neither of them is planning on drinking, because they’ve got to play tomorrow for the first time in a while, and while playing with limited practice is bad enough, being hungover as well almost ensures mistakes.

Josh’s friends are nice. They’re all cooler than Tyler will ever be, confident in the way they move and the way they dress.

The girl sitting next to him, Ashley, says, “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Good things?” Tyler’s tearing his napkin into tiny pieces.

“Mostly,” she says. She’s kind of intimidating. “I hear you’re a married man. Where’s the ring?”

“Just engaged,” says Tyler.

“And you’ve known Josh for, what, three years?”

“Um, about six,” he corrects.

“So you know everything about him.” She looks interested, eyes brighter than they were a second ago. “Like, because we can’t figure him out. We as in—” She gestures to the entire table.

Tyler gets the feeling that this was a bad idea. “I know some stuff. I’m not really sure what you mean, I don’t think.”

“Well, you know. What’s his type? Any dirty secrets he wouldn’t care if you told us?” She takes a sip of her drink and leans further across the table.

“I don’t really know,” says Tyler.

“You see,” she explains, “It’s sort of hard to tell who he’s flirting with, or if he’s flirting with you at all. Noah, down there, he’s absolutely convinced Josh likes him. So are about three other people at this table.”

Tyler says, “Huh.”

“So,” she continues, “I assume you’ve been his wingman before. Do—”

Tyler stops her before she can get any further. “I haven’t really done that. I don’t think he’d go for that, and I’d be a terrible wingman. I don’t really know what to say. Josh would probably tell you, though, if you asked.”

“It’s alright,” she says. She cocks her head. “You’re a little different than how Josh made you sound.”

Tyler grimaces. “How did he make me sound?”

She shrugs, small.

When they leave, Tyler says, “One of your friends implied you managed to become some sort of group heartthrob.”

“It must be my magnetic personality.” The night air is chilly around them, and Josh has his hands stuffed into his pockets while they walk back to the apartment.

Tyler says, “Are you?”

“Am I what? On People Magazine’s list of options for the hottest men of 2015? You bet.”

Tyler stops walking. “No, I meant, are you, are you with any of them.” He’s not quite sure why it’s important.

Turning around so he can face him, Josh says, “No. No, I’m not. Hurry up, I’m cold.” He starts walking backwards.

+

They play late at night in a TV studio. There are a few people who won something, and managed to get passes, but they play in almost complete silence except for when the audience members are asked to clap.

It all feels very staged.

They spent the entire morning and afternoon doing prep work in the studio, and Tyler kind of resents how long it took.

The stage lights are hot, hotter than they are in real concerts, and Tyler starts feeling gross and sweaty by the second song even though it’s air-conditioned, his hand slipping over the keys. Josh loses one of his drumsticks and tries to pretend like he threw it.

They take a cab back.

Josh says, “I feel so fucking disgusting. That was terrible. I think everyone noticed I dropped my stick.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to play it off,” Tyler says. “Also, I need clean pajamas.”

“Did you even bring clothing besides what you wore on the plane?”

“Yes,” Tyler says defensively. He brought other pieces of clothing, just not that many. He didn’t have a lot of room.

Leading them back to his room and motioning for Tyler to start looking through the drawers, Josh says, “Help yourself.”

He comes out of the shower half-dressed, wearing pajama pants. He sits down on the bed next to Tyler.

“Did you even change?” He asks.

“I got distracted.” Tyler feels like his limbs have liquified in Josh’s bed; he doesn’t want to move.

“You’ve melted into the bed,” Josh observes. “You have to get up. This is what I’m talking about, you’re all over it; I can’t even sit down.” He says, “We could watch a movie.”

They do, and Tyler falls asleep halfway through, lying down flat so the top of his head presses against Josh’s leg and his legs fall over the edge. He wakes up at the very end, slow and confused.

He glances at the screen. “I have no idea what’s going on,” he mumbles.

“Neither do I, and I watched the entire thing.”

Tyler’s looking up at Josh from a very weird angle when he feels Josh’s hand touch his hair, light.

“It's gotten long at the top,” says Josh. “I think I like it, though.”

Tyler shuts his eyes against the feeling.

He says, “I missed you,” because it’s astounding, how much he misses him right now. It hits him all at once, working its way through his brain and curling up at the edges of his skull.

Tyler thinks, impulsive, that he messed up somewhere.

Josh is looking down at him in the dim light of his apartment, waiting for him to say something else, his t-shirt hanging down so Tyler can see the hollow of his throat, taking up Tyler’s half of the couch, and Tyler thinks, somewhere along the line, he might have replaced God.

Not as in the figure, not in the literal sense, but removed from the space Tyler used for Him, the one-third of his head that told him _yes_, do this, _yes_, go to church, _yes_, this is all you’ve ever known.

“You too,” Josh says, casual. His hand is still in Tyler’s hair.

Readjusting so he’s sitting up, face level with Josh’s, he says, “I’d wish you’d come home. I can’t write when you’re not there.”

Josh says, “I’m going to. You can learn to.”

“I can’t,” says Tyler, and they both know it’s true. “I’ve tried.”

His entire side is along Josh’s, there’s no space between. “Remember when we did our first album together and I would go home and write in my apartment?” He doesn’t know why he’s telling Josh now, so far past that it’s never going to matter. “I couldn’t. I would try, but nothing would ever come, and then I would spend the night at your house the next day and I would think of everything I had to say.”

When Josh responds, it’s rushed, low, but he’s not looking away. “The things you say to me in places like this, fuck, I don’t know how I’m supposed to respond. When you tell me—that, that you can’t write without me—what do you want me to think?” It’s barely a question.

Josh is agitated; Tyler can feel the way he tenses, so he shifts away, leaning in the other direction. He doesn’t know how to respond; he’s not going to lie.

“No,” Josh says, less sharp, hand touching Tyler’s shoulder where he moved, “I’m not mad at you, I just, people don’t talk like this, Tyler. They don’t do this.”

Josh is making him nervous.

He asks, “What should I be saying?”

“I don’t know. Not asking that question, probably. You’re so much, Tyler.” He murmurs the last bit, tone changing. “Sorry.”

He still looks unsettled, but he’s relaxed back into the couch, rubs his hand over his eyes. “Sorry,” he says again, bites his lip. He looks at Tyler like Tyler’s going to be upset about it, eyes wide. “All I meant was, sometimes I don't know what to say.”

He’s not usually like this, quiet and unsure of himself.

There’s a lamp on next to them, faint and yellow, and it casts odd shadows across Josh’s face. The cut of his jaw, the spaces under his eyes, the line of his neck.

Tyler wants to kiss him.

It’s woven into the way he wants to press his fingers to Josh’s collarbones, the way when light hits him at a certain angle Tyler wants to trace the lines of his face.

Josh must see something in his expression, how Tyler looks at him and then drops his head because he can’t process it for a second.

He asks, “Are we good?”

Tyler says, “I’m not sure,” and then tilts his head and kisses him.

Josh stills, and Tyler’s not sure if it’s from resignation or surprise.

He lets Josh react, lets him pull away and speak against Tyler’s mouth, lips warm. “You shouldn’t do that. It’s not fair.” His voice is steady, but he’s got one hand on Tyler’s jaw, his thumb right under the bone.

So it was a surprise, then. Relief washes over him.

“You can stop me,” breathes Tyler.

Josh doesn’t say anything, just lets Tyler kiss him again, open-mouthed and wanting.

He tastes different than Tyler remembers, turns hot and demanding in seconds in a way that makes Tyler feel electrified.

He wishes they didn’t fit together like this, wishes it didn’t make his whole body tremble when Josh puts his hands on waist.

“It’s been so long,” Josh says, thoughtless, pressed up against him so Tyler can feel it under his rib cage, and Tyler has to turn away to pant against Josh’s cheek, because he remembers what this was like. “Three years, since we,” he says, shakily, cuts himself short.

“You’ve been counting,” Josh is saying into his mouth, “God, you’ve been counting,” and he pushes Tyler back against one end of the couch so he’s half-lying on top of him, one leg in-between Tyler’s so that Tyler gasps and tries not to arch up whenever Josh presses down.

“You’re always so fucking reactive,” Josh says, scratchy so that it’s almost a growl. They're still kissing between words, frantic enough that Tyler feels like they’re in the last scene of a movie, and he moans with Josh’s tongue in his mouth.

It’s been so long.

Tyler pushes his hips up so Josh will grind down against him and feels high on it, whines when Josh moves to hold one of Tyler’s wrists against the arm of the couch so he can kiss him harder.

It’s embarrassing, the way he’s so hard that every time Josh rolls his hips he feels his stomach contract, his cock throb.

Josh breaks off, says, “Do you want me to touch you,” soft into Tyler’s ear, hips still moving in slow circles, and Tyler says “Yes, yes,” all half-gasps and mixed-up letters. He exhales, “Please,” when Josh presses kisses down his stomach, nipping at the skin there.

Tyler’s breath keeps getting caught up in his throat, and Josh pushes down his sweatpants so he can mouth further down his stomach, moving one of his hands to grip Tyler’s hip bones so he’ll stay still.

Josh watches him while he licks his hand and curls it around Tyler’s cock, face intent, cheeks flushing slightly when Tyler lets out a high-pitched sound that he’s not able to bite his tongue around.

Three years ago they had done this, Josh getting him off against the wall so Tyler couldn’t think about anything but him, and they’re here now, and God, nothing’s changed at all.

Josh doesn’t say anything else until he’s got Tyler seconds away from coming, when he can feel his face hot and eyes shut tight, before Josh says, “Can I fuck you,” right up against Tyler’s jawline. Tyler groans, feels his body heat up from where Josh has his hands on him all the way up his chest.

He says, “Fuck, fuck, Josh,” loud and pleading into the room, trying not to arch when Josh takes his hand off his cock, moves both his hands to hold Tyler’s wrists above his head so he won’t touch himself. He almost doesn’t know, they’ve never—he’s never.

Tyler opens his eyes to Josh leaning over him, mouth wet and swollen. Josh’s eyes are all pupil; Tyler can see how hard Josh is, the outline of him through his pajama pants, and it makes his tongue feel dry.

“I’m not—I don’t know, I—” He’s still breathing heavily, still so turned-on it’s difficult to concentrate.

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” Josh is saying, loosening his hold on Tyler’s wrists, “You don’t have to, tell me to stop if it’s bad.” Tyler’s not senseless enough to think that’s going to be the problem.

“Okay, okay,” he’s mumbling, “We can see, just.” He wants Josh to touch him again, anything.

“Slow,” Josh says, still too rough and low, putting his arm around Tyler’s back and pulling him off the couch, straightening his clothes so he can lead Tyler back to his room.

Josh kisses him again next to his bed, standing with his palm over the small of Tyler’s back, until Tyler’s closing his eyes into it and moving his hand to rest with his fingertips just under Josh’s shirt. He wants to feel Josh breathe under him, thinks about telling him.

When Josh separates from him, and they’re both panting heavy on each other, Tyler’s hand still on him, he says, “You can lay down, if you want.”

He backs Tyler towards the bed, slow, letting him sit against the headboard.

“We can only do this once,” says Josh, and it’s sudden, makes Tyler start. “We shouldn’t even, God, you’re getting married, how could I.” He sounds like he’s mostly talking to himself.

Tyler carefully doesn’t think, and says, “We’ve said that every time.” He wants Josh to kiss him again, wrap his hands around his wrists.

Josh laughs, kind of panicky, and says, “That should probably tell us something, right?” He says it as he’s pushing himself towards Tyler, eyes bright, until their noses are touching.

“Maybe,” whispers Tyler, not quite sure what he’s responding to. “Could you—” he doesn’t know how to ask, he doesn’t want to unless Josh will do it for him. He kisses him instead, pulling Josh down. Josh lets him.

They kiss, wet and more than Tyler can handle, and then Josh says, “Get on your back,” breathy, eyes focused like Tyler hasn’t seen them before. “I’ve never,” Tyler says, because part of him is nervous, clawing at him, and Josh says, “No, it's okay, I didn’t think so.”

Tyler doesn't want to stop looking at him.

It's how Josh can’t seem to break from kissing him once Tyler’s laying down, crawled up over him with his hands next to Tyler’s head, that makes Tyler pull him close again so their hips are aligned and Josh’s weight is on top of him.

“I need to, I’ve got,” says Josh, and doesn't finish, but moves off of Tyler to reach into his bedside drawer. It makes it feel more real, sudden and sparking, and Josh pulls off Tyler’s shirt, getting it caught on his elbows and making him laugh softly. Tyler aches and shuts his eyes when Josh bites at his throat, when he pulls off the rest of Tyler’s clothes, helping Tyler lift himself up off the bed so they come off smoothly.

He takes off his pajama pants, says, “You’re okay,” and it’s half-question, half-statement. Tyler says, “Yeah,” choked-up because it’s so intimate, seeing Josh like this, feeling the way he traces Tyler’s chest as he talks. Tyler’s trying not to stare, but he does anyway, over Josh’s bones and the V-shape of his hips he’s seen a thousand times in a thousand different contexts, and Josh must notice, because he smiles, quick.

Josh’s mouth is red from kissing him, and Tyler wants to touch it, push his thumb over it. He doesn’t.

Josh has lube in his bedside drawer, and Tyler isn’t going to think about the connotations, but it doesn’t matter because Josh touches him then, sure, asks Tyler if he would pull his legs up so he can press a finger against him, in him.

It’s unfamiliar; his brain doesn't seem to be able to get the details, he’s too busy being over-aware that it’s _Josh_, it’s Josh, and Tyler can’t get himself to stop moving under him.

Josh knows what he’s doing and this isn’t a surprise; he always knows better than Tyler does and he crooks his fingers hard so that Tyler’s entire body jolts and he sees sparks behind his eyelids, feels his muscles clench. Tyler gasps when Josh does it, then Josh does it again, curling his fingers and kissing Tyler’s hipbones and his cock so that Tyler feels it running up his spine.

Josh adds another finger, and Tyler slurs, “Josh, God,” because if he’s imagined this, it’s better. He’s got two fingers in Tyler, is hitting him in the right place every time so that Tyler has to turn his face to the side, press it into the pillow with his mouth open.

He wants more; it’s burning him up, how Josh isn’t giving him quite enough, the strangeness has faded and _fuck_, he’s so hard, he doesn’t know how, and then Josh is asking “Can I fuck you,” again, fingers still pushing into him, making Tyler shake over and over, so Tyler says, “Yes,” high and uneven, breaking off at the end.

Tyler can hear him unwrap the condom, uncap the lube. He slips his fingers out, moves, and Tyler can feel his cock against him, Jesus, he can’t believe—

Josh has him, trapped, Tyler’s legs around his waist, pushing in so Tyler bites his tongue. It hurts, and Josh sees him wince and says “Sorry, sorry, I know,” and brushes Tyler’s hair smooth with his hand, inhales when Tyler adjusts his hips slightly.

“Fuck, you’re, you feel really good,” Josh says, unsteady, eyes flicking shut. He gives Tyler time for the ache to fade, and it becomes less sharp, blunted, until Tyler’s trying to push back because of how much he wants it and Josh is hissing “Shit, Tyler,” and thrusting into him.

It’s too much; it’s overwhelming, how Josh is fucking him, caging him in, making Tyler feel out of control.

Josh says, gasping it over him, “Does she ever have you like this—like I have you right now, how you look, has she ever—”

Tyler moans. “No,” he says. “She never has,” he’s panting into Josh’s arm, hands fisted around the bed sheets.

“It’s terrible, that you haven’t let her, I can’t believe,” but Josh doesn’t even sound upset; he just moans deep enough that it makes Tyler harder, lifts up so Josh can get deeper.

Delirious, Tyler says, “Harder, _fuck_, could you,” and Josh does and Tyler’s crying, “There, there,” because he feels like he’s going to die from it, how close the two of them are, how he would come if Josh brushed over his cock one more time.

“Do you think you could come without me touching you,” asks Josh, and Tyler curves off the bed into him, hears himself whine.

“Fucking hell,” Josh hisses, but he doesn’t let Tyler find out, because Josh wraps his fingers around him, thumb circling the tip, and Tyler drops his mouth open and feels hot need pool at the base of his spine, says, “Fuck, I’m going to, _please_,” and throws his head back against the pillow, biting his lower lip and trying not to make too much noise.

His muscles contract when he comes, all over his chest, Josh’s hand, and Josh’s eyes go glassy and his hips snap forward and he rakes his nails down Tyler’s chest.

Josh drops his head on Tyler’s shoulder, shifts to kiss his cheek in a way so reminiscent of when he left that Tyler feels like he’s having a flashback, before he pulls out.

“Okay, okay,” Josh is saying, voice hazy.

It takes Tyler a minute to respond. “Yeah,” he says, and he hates the way his voice sounds.

He’s still lying on his back, watching Josh pull his pajama pants on inside out.

Josh sits down on the bed and touches Tyler’s chest where his nails marked, where there’s still come on Tyler’s chest, murmurs, “Sorry.” Tyler can barely feel it, but he shudders when Josh touches him anyway.

He feels overstimulated, knows he’s flushed red. Josh takes his hand away after a moment, leaving Tyler’s chest sticky.

He doesn’t know what to say. There’s nowhere for him to go, he can’t leave. They might not do it again, ever again, but it’s too real, too present, that Tyler could forget about it.

He thinks of a scene where he gets off the bed, puts on clothes, and tells Josh he’s going to sleep in the living room. As he’s leaving, he would turn around and tell Josh that they’re going to forget about it when they wake up, not that forgetting it quite worked with the others.

Here is why Tyler’s not going to do this: he doesn’t know what Josh will say.

Josh could tell Tyler he’s lying—he would be right. Alternatively, he could tell Tyler that yes, they’re never going to talk about it again, and then they would both be comfortably lying, assuming this time is not different from the rest. He doesn’t know how Josh feels, in this moment. Guilty, probably. More guilty than Tyler, although maybe for different reasons.

Instead, Tyler says nothing. After a minute, he pushes himself off the bed, picks up his clothing from the corner of the room, and gets into the shower. The water’s too hot, but he doesn’t bother to change it.

The shower makes the marks on his chest look darker, where Josh touched when he came. Tyler tilts his head back and lets the water wash over his face.

Turning the water off and pulling on his clothing back on, he comes back into the room. Josh has turned off the lights during the five minutes Tyler was in the shower, but the light of the bathroom illuminates his face. He’s on his side, facing the middle of the bed.

“The couch isn’t made,” says Tyler. He doesn’t even know if it’s true.

“That’s fine,” says Josh. “You can make it tomorrow.” He moves back further on his side of the bed, giving Tyler room. As he’s turning to face the other side, away from Tyler, he says, “Try not to take up the entire bed.”

Tyler lies down next to him and can feel the warmth of his body. He briefly thinks about pressing their shoulders together, just their shoulders, or maybe his shoulder against Josh’s back just for a second, by accident because he’s got to shift to get comfortable.

He doesn’t. He shuts his eyes.

It takes an hour to fall asleep, because his mind is too loud. His eyes are still shut as he curls and re-curls his hands into fists at his side, unmoving, fingernails digging into his palms.

He thinks about consequences, and how maybe none of this will matter because it’s out of his system now. It’s too dark in the room to see anything but the outline of Josh, curved away from him. Tyler can hear him breathing.

Tyler doesn’t necessarily pride himself in self-awareness, but he starts to wonder if he hasn’t been honest with himself.

Jenna is so far away and Tyler thinks maybe she’s sleeping, thousands of miles from Josh’s bed.

Tyler loves her. Tyler loves her and the comfort of her is a constant, something warm and whole he is drawn to like a moth to a streetlight.

He knows deep in his bones that she deserves better than him. She needs someone who wants her truly and fully, not just the weak shade of whatever Tyler’s offered her.

Tyler wishes desperately, not for the first time, that he could give her more of himself.

Josh is asleep, shoulders rising slow, and Tyler wants to press his nose into the spot between Josh’s shoulder blades and never move. He thinks about fitting up against Josh’s spine and draping an arm over his back to curl his hand around Josh’s wrist.

He takes full, deep breaths to relax, like his mother showed him when she was going through a yoga phase, and falls asleep thinking of what Jenna might have planted in the garden while he’s been away.

When Tyler wakes up, he suddenly remembers his mental list of things to tell Josh in-person. Jenna asked him to do it as well, so it’s even more important.

Josh is still asleep, so Tyler figures it can wait at least a few hours. He looks soft around the edges, hair in every direction on the pillowcase.

In his sleep, he’s turned to face Tyler. He’s on his side, leaning towards the middle of the bed, fingers clutching the sheets.

Pushing the covers off, Tyler stands up. He walks into the living room and stalls for a minute looking through Josh’s window at people walking by with their dogs or with their phones pressed against their ears.

He pulls on shoes and picks up breakfast at the coffee shop across the street.

When he comes back, Josh is in the kitchen pouring milk into a bowl of Froot Loops.

“What are you,” says Tyler, “Eight?”

He’s still not wearing a t-shirt, and Tyler can see the way his collar bones move under his skin when he turns around. “Many of us, Tyler, still have some semblance of youth left in us.”

Then he pauses. “Oh. You went and got food.”

“Yes,” says Tyler, who’s carefully looking at a spot on Josh’s cabinet a little to the left of his head. “Bagels. And coffee, if you want it.”

“I already have Froot Loops.” Josh taps his spoon on the counter a few times. “But I guess I could save them. Oh wait, no I couldn’t. They’re going to get soggy if I just leave them.”

He looks genuinely regretful.

Tyler feels extremely unsympathetic.

Josh pushes the bowl to the side. “The sacrifices I make for you.”

+

Tyler does not tell Josh about the Important Thing until later that day. This is because he’s avoiding it.

They’re sitting on the couch watching some kind of baking show, and Tyler has been thinking of the best way to ask Josh for the past five minutes.

He’s kind of mentally been referring to it as “popping the question,” because that’s what Jenna said when she asked Tyler a few months ago if he had officially asked Josh to be his best man or not, but it just makes it sound like he’s genuinely proposing.

“I was thinking,” Tyler says, “ about how I don’t really have many friends.” He turns to look at Josh.

Tyler immediately wishes he could go back in time ten seconds and slap himself.

Josh says, “You have like, two.” He yawns halfway through the sentence, head rolled on the back cushion of the couch. “Why? Are you trying to make more? Are you going to ask me how I do it?”

Tyler forgets the rest of his great best man speech. “Do what?”

“Have more friends than you.”

“It’s not your sparkling personality, I know that.”

“You’re right,” says Josh. “It’s my good looks. I knew you would understand.”

Tyler grins, even though usually he would bite back, and then realizes it’s because he’s grateful. Josh is acting absolutely normal.

“Anyways,” says Tyler, “I need a best man.”

And because Josh is so calm, legs all stretched over the coffee table, Tyler draws his head back a few inches in physical shock when Josh says, “How many grooms are out there, do you think, who’ve fucked their best man?”

It takes Tyler half a second to realize Josh is giving him an out. He’s not mad.

The way Josh is saying it, really, reminds Tyler to look at it in a different way. He’s not going to freak out. He can’t freak out. Who’s he going to blame, himself?

But here’s why this time is different than the times before it: Tyler isn’t going to deny it ever happened like he did that first time, repress it so forcefully that seeing Josh move towards him made him freeze.

Tyler laughs, and it sounds too sharp. “Maybe about 20 percent?”

Mouth curving, Josh says, “That’s kind of a high estimate.” Pause. “You cheated.”

Tyler shuts his eyes, because he knows.

Part of him almost says, “You didn’t stop me.” He thinks maybe he would have said that two years ago, but he knows better now. Or: things have changed. One of those.

Instead, Tyler pauses for a second, then asks, soft, “What do I do? Do I tell her?”

Josh doesn’t hesitate. “Ethically, yes.”

“How?” Tyler touches the coffee table with one hand.

  
Josh stands up, crosses the room, and picks up his coffee on the counter. “So you told her about the other times?”

Tyler doesn’t look at him. “You know I haven’t.”

“What if I have?”

Tyler freezes. He hasn’t thought about that, that hasn’t even crossed his mind. “You wouldn’t.”

“No.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Josh rests his chin on his hand. “I can’t tell you what’s right. I also can’t tell you what I’d do in your situation, because I like to think I’ll never be in your situation.”

Tyler stares out the window. He watches a man standing across the street gesture wildly with a Starbucks cup, spilling as he tries to get his point across to whoever he’s on the phone with.

“I love her.”

“I don’t doubt that. But you can really love someone and not want to marry them. There are different types.”

Tyler is well aware. “Are you saying I shouldn’t marry her?”

Josh’s brows furrow. “Not exactly. I’m just saying before you do anything rash, like ask me to be your best man, it’s my duty as your best friend to make sure you know what you’re doing.”

Tyler says, “I think I know what I’m doing,” and means it to comes across as less unsure than it does.

In a few days, he will take a taxi from Josh’s LA apartment to the airport.

He will be unable to sleep on the plane even if he takes something, and Jenna will pick him up at Columbus International and be nice to him no matter how jetlagged and moody he is. He doesn’t think he wants that. He’s not sure.

He looks across the countertop at Josh again, who’s tipped the bowl of cereal so he can drink the rest of the sugary Froot Loop milk from this morning. It’s kind of gross.

Josh’s hair is a particularly horrible color this month. He’s messy, and if left to his own devices would have the strict diet of an eight-year-old boy.

But Tyler’s watched him play drums on stage for thousands of hours, for sold-out stadiums, for just Tyler, for when he thinks nobody’s watching.

And somehow, even after all these years, Tyler’s still not sick of him.

The thought of leaving LA to go back to his real house halfway across the country makes his heart ache. He misses not knowing what he wanted.

He doesn’t say anything else for a minute, and Josh doesn’t respond.

Tyler doesn’t know what to do. He has never felt less connected to obligatory morality than he does in this moment.

Josh studies him cautiously. “What are you thinking about?”

Tyler watches Josh drum his fingers on the countertop. “I’m not sure if you really want to know this time.”

He feels so tired. He wonders, going forward, how many more moments will be like this. This one feels particularly limited, like the two of them are trying to crush a whole life into 48 hours.

Tyler doesn’t think it’s working.

There are hundreds of mornings Tyler can see snapshots of, where they’ve woken up together and eaten together and lived together. Maybe he’s had his chance.

He hates feeling like he’s pulling at unravelling string. Parts of him want it to be four years ago, back when they weren’t famous and didn’t care about anything but the music.

Sometimes, he entertains what his life would have become if the band hadn’t taken off.

Tyler doesn’t think he could ever stop writing music, but he would have stopped showing it to people. He could’ve gotten a job as a music teacher.

He doesn't know what Josh would’ve done. Probably still play drums on the side, in addition to being a tattoo artist. Or a sky-diving instructor. Or another career suited for the type of person who likes percussion instruments.

“Use your best judgement.”

Tyler swallows. “If we weren’t famous. Like if we weren’t even in a functional band anymore because we never got anywhere with it, and instead we both moved on to other things and on with our lives. Would we still have this?” He gestures into the space between them and hopes that’s clear enough for Josh to understand.

“By ‘this,’ do you mean, would we still be friends? Or would I ditch you the second I realized you wouldn’t bring me the fame and fortune of my dreams.”

That’s mostly what he meant. Tyler nods.

Josh looks agitated. “You’ve been around me for what, six years, and you suddenly have the nerve to ask if our whole relationship has been performative?”

Tyler interrupts. “No, that’s not exactly what I’m saying, I just meant. Would things be different if we weren’t famous. Would we be as close if we had nothing tying us together; when I saw you in that bookstore if I had come over with no intention to recruit you into an internationally popular band would you have come to me anyways. And would it have been**—**like this.” Tyler can’t seem to find the right words.

“I’m not sure if I know what you’re asking. I’m not sure if _you_ even know what you’re asking.”

For someone whose whole job is to write words down and sell them, Tyler struggles impressively every time he has to get an idea across that actually counts.

He thinks he’s making a mistake by asking. In this precise moment, though, he has to know. He’s afraid that this is the type of scene that will haunt him for the rest of his life if he doesn’t.

“What would it be like if it were four years ago and there was just the two of us again, how it was when we didn’t know anyone and we didn’t have interviews or people stopping us on the streets, and Friday nights we watched movies on your couch until we fell asleep.”

“What would it be like if that had never ended?” Josh’s eyes flash with an emotion Tyler doesn’t recognize, but it’s not happiness. Despondency, maybe, from the way he stares at Tyler before letting his eyes close for a second.

Tyler nods.

“I try not to think about it.”

“Which parts?”

“What are you trying to get me to say?” Josh rubs his eyes. The tense lines of his shoulders make Tyler think maybe he’s pushing it too far. Josh says, “I’m not guessing. I’m not giving you that.”

“I don’t think I’m ever going to find anyone like you.” Right now, Tyler’s sure. He takes a breath. “Sometimes I think you’re it. I think**—**we’ll be on stage and I’ll see you, and I’ll think that if there was no one else in the room and we didn’t have a record deal, maybe we didn’t even make music, that I would still**—**that it would still be you.”

Josh opens his mouth to say something, but Tyler doesn’t let him. “And it’s not like I just realized this. It’s just that now, I know lots of types of people and things. There are so many people who love me for what I do. I thought that I would stop feeling like this somewhere along the way, but I haven’t. It’s just gotten worse, because now I feel like I know for sure.”

Tyler pauses for a second. “I think I just want to know what it’s like for you.”

“I don’t know where we would be right now if we weren’t in a band.” Josh looks thoughtful, chewing his lower lip and fixated on a scratch in the granite.

“You’re a very different person than the guy who stopped me in a bookstore six years ago and spent months trying to get me to go to church with him. I’m not sure if that’s due to personal growth, or exposure, or fame, or whatever. But I think**—**I know**—**that I like this version of you the best.

“I used to think I would always want more from you than you would want from me. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Right now, in this life, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing. I think maybe if we lived in the place you’re talking about, where it’s nobody but us against the world and we get real jobs in the city and become real people**—**that’s when it would be a good thing. But I think we missed that chance.” Josh stops, finally looks at Tyler.

Tyler’s methodically pulling bits of fuzz off his pants. Intellectually, he understands that Josh is right.

He even understands it’s his own fault they’re static, but knowing does nothing to stop the tightness in his throat. He wants to go back in time.

Getting up off the couch, he walks to the counter and sits in the corner stool next to where Josh is standing. “I think I made a mistake.” His voice is rough.

“Tyler,” says Josh, and no one’s ever been able to say his name quite the way Josh does, all soft syllables like a prayer. “You can fix mistakes. You can do anything, as long as you know what you want and you know what you’ve done.”

Tyler says, “Okay. I’m not sure that means it’s the moral or right thing to do.”

“If I’m understanding you correctly, I think this is one of those unfortunate cases where the moral thing to do has little correlation with what will make you happy.”

“Okay,” says Tyler again. He turns his face to Josh, who’s looking back at him like he can see straight through Tyler’s soul. Tyler never wants to stop looking at him.

Tyler has seen Josh look unsure of himself a total of three times, and this is the third. He’s gotten all the information Josh is willing to give. It’s enough.

He stands up so they’re face to face. It’s silly; they’re standing barefoot in Josh’s kitchen in an apartment that will, after March, never be in their lives again. He moves to touch the flush of Josh’s cheek, fingers skating over the high bones and down Josh’s jaw.

Josh doesn’t move, just stills.

Tyler says, “Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent my whole life waiting for you.”

Josh shuts his eyes and turns his cheek into Tyler’s hand. He breathes in, sharp, then says, “That’s a little dramatic, even for you.”

Taking his hand back, Tyler chokes out a laugh. “I try to up my game every few months, just to keep the people guessing.”

“How kind of you.” Josh is smiling now, that half-crooked one he never does on stage.

Tyler feels like his chest is wide open, ribcage and heart and everything. He thinks for a second they might hug, arms and hands all over each other, but neither of them moves in.

There’s a pause while they each wait for the other to act. Eventually, Josh moves to place his bowl in the sink.

Rinsing off the spoon and managing to spray water all over the counter, Josh says, “We should go over and record soon.”

“Yeah,” Tyler says. He’d forgotten they booked time for today. “I’ll put on real human clothing.” He gestures to Josh, who is still shirtless and wearing pajama bottoms with clouds on them. “I think you’re set, though.”

“I am. This is going to be our new look.”

“No masks,” agrees Tyler. “Just no shirts and pajama bottoms from the girls section at Target.”

“The audience will eat us up.”

Tyler says, “The label would probably go for it.”

“You know what? They just might.”

Tyler rolls his eyes.

He picks clothes out of his suitcase and moves to the bathroom to change. He looks behind him once as he crosses the threshold and sees Josh still in the kitchen, trying and failing to properly load the dishwasher.

He feels light for the first time in ages.

~_fin_

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this in 2015, and the majority of it was written a few years ago. Thank you again to my friend and editor R. They're amazing, and miraculously tolerated my writing pace of about four words per year. Without their support, I never would have posted this (or realistically, written beyond the first half). Thank you— this is for you! 
> 
> _Other things:_  
I have no idea what Jenna’s actual job is. For some reason, I vividly imagine her as European History professor. 
> 
> I tried to stay as close to the timeline of their tours as possible. Most of the dates, tour names, etc, are all legit.


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